Medical Hx(Stories) Of My Black Trans Body
An oral hxstory-driven project to (re)search, document, preserve, mobilize, and heal the medical narratives of Afro-TGNC peoples in the movement to end healthcare injustice
About
As a Black trans and or queer individual, what stories of Medicine do you carry in your body and in your bones? How have you experienced the medical system? How has the medical system experienced you? How do structures of power and oppression impact your health? How have you navigated "wellness" and "illness" across your lifetime? What is your family's narrative of medicine? How do you create your own medicine?
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Black TGNC peoples have deep historical, political, and ancestral connections to the Medical System. As storied as we are in the context of Medicine, however, we are rarely afforded the radical freedom to recount our experiences. Medical HxStories is a narrative justice project created to name the experiences of Black trans, gender non-conforming, non-binary, gender-queer, and gender expansive peoples within the medical industrial complex. This project also aims to name and document the ways in which we create our own indigenous medicines within/without colonial healthcare systems to heal ourselves and our communities.
What Will Be Created
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An oral hxstory archive of recorded interviews with Black TGNC folks around the world. This archive will be made primarily accessible to the Afro-TGNC community. It will be stored digitally and also shared through physical convenings.
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A photography series that tells a visual story of Afro Trans-Queer bodies experiencing/engaging with/creating medicine.
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A book that traces a pre-colonial to contemporary hxstory of medicine from a diasporic Afro Trans-Queer perspective. This book will give a systematic accounting and analysis of Medicine’s role in the creation of racialized constructs of binary sex, genders, and sexualities within African communities to support the argument that healthcare injustice originates from, and is sustained through, gross dehumanization of Black TGNC bodies. This book will also push for a Movement for Liberation Medicine that is centered on Black TGNC practices of medicine.
Invitation to Share Your Stories
LMS is currently holding recorded individual and group conversations with Black TGNC peoples about our experiences as medicine seekers and makers.
In this period of an ongoing pandemic, repeals, of trans healthcare rights, the increase in violence against Black Trans people, we are especially committed to gathering our narratives to make sure that our voices do not remain silenced.
If you are interested in sharing your stories of health and medicine, as well as how you are being impacted during this period of COVID-19, please email us at liberationmedicineschool@gmail.com.