Queering Traditions, Decolonizing Queerness: A Literature Review of Queer Worldmaking Tradition Bearers

Abstract

For many diasporic queer people of colour, participating in cultural traditions may mean erasing or suppressing their nonheteronormative identities. Similarly, participating in mainstream queer culture may mean erasing or suppressing ethnic, religious, racial, or cultural heritage. This borderlands existence often evokes intense pain but can also compel great creative agency. Stirred to explore this dual reality, I created a literature review of queer cultural, ethnic, and religious rituals. Conducted in English language and drawing on academic and nonacademic data, this review includes African, Caribbean, Central and South American, South Asian, Southeast Asian, Turtle Island First Nations, Muslim, Jewish, and Christian communities throughout the world. I used thematic analysis to derive 7 sources of energy that ignited and sustained the messy processes of queer ritual innovation. This MRP aims to equip queer people of colour with the knowledge of a worldwide legacy in honoring one’s full, multifaceted identity through ritual-making.