The anthropological canon has limitations regarding research and ethnographies attending to gender and sexually diverse communities. The rural South is home to many Black Queer folks. In the U.S., an estimated 2.9 to 3.8 million people live in rural communities, and 33 to 35% of Queer folks live in southern America. Also, nine out of ten Black folks who live in rural spaces live in the South (Project 2019). 

Therefore, the research question that guides this work is:

 
[1] What is the lived experience of Black queer folks in the rural South as it relates to accessing care in domestic spaces and places such as healthcare settings (i.e., clinics, hospitals, therapy, etc.)? 
Further questions that aid in answering the more significant research question are:

 
[2a] How do Black Queer folks narrate lived experience and “care” in the rural South? [2b] How does accessing care or a lack of care impact finances, partnerships, communal integration, personal well-being, and familial relationships? 

[2c] In what ways does healthcare access and settings influence Black Queer folk’s ideas about the rural South and their future there? 

My work provides critical insights into the complex relationship that Black queer people have with the rural South by analyzing, assessing, and defining their notions of access, care, and futurity. I will answer these questions through hybrid ethnographic methods, employing online and in-person interviews with Black Queer folks who live in the rural South and producing a Black Queer photographic archive. This project is staked in the particular relationality among Black Queer rural southern folks–our ability to produce vulnerable narrative spaces due to shared lived experiences, the shared “critical memory” (Young 2010) of the rural South as a Black Queer person.