I’m Sweet on You

This chapter probes the narrators’ deep and enduring emotional and romantic attachments to other women, primarily by focusing on stories of dating and marriage. Johnson’s interlocutors recall: stories of how they met their partners, memories of particular dates, their family’s responses to their relationships, and, for some of them, how and when they decided to pursue marriage. Importantly, Johnson notes that all of these interviews took place before the Supreme Court case that legalized same-sex marriage across the nation in 2015. Despite the legal limits of partnership in Southern states, several of these women chose to remain in the region. Their choices reflect the need to think expansively about the possibilities for queer life for Black women in the South.