by Britney Daniels
Common Notions
5/9/2023, paperback
SKU: 9781942173779
In this searing, honest memoir, a Black queer emergency-room nurse works the front lines of care during COVID-19.
Britney Daniels is a Black, masculine-presenting, tattooed lesbian from a working-class background. For the last five years, she has been working as an emergency-room nurse. She began Journal of a Black Queer Nurse as a personal diary, a tool to heal from the day-to-day traumas of seeing too much and caring too much.
Hilarious, gut-wrenching, and infuriating by turns, these stories are told from the perspective of a deeply empathetic, no-nonsense young nurse, who highlights the way race, inequality, and a profit-driven healthcare system make the hospital a place where systemic racism is lived.
Whether it is giving one's own clothes to a homeless patient, sticking up for patients of color in the face of indifference from white doctors and nurses, or nursing one's own back pain accrued from transporting too many bodies as the morgues overflowed during the pandemic, Journal of a Black Queer Nurse reveals the ways in which care is much more than treating a physical body and how the commitment to real care-care that involves listening to and understanding patients in a deeper sense--demands nurses, especially nurses of color, must also be warriors.
Reviews:
"Journal of a Black Queer Nurse reminds readers of the importance of centering the voices of Black women, and specifically those of Black queer women, as we share stories about the challenges we must work together to overcome. Equal parts personal narrative and sharing stories about the medical-industrial complex, Britney's work highlights the power of love, the importance of inclusion, and the opportunities each of us has to interrogate and push past limiting, socially constructed boundaries that are designed to prevent us from bearing witness, finding comfort in who we are and how we move through the world, and telling our stories. I'm thankful for this offering and for Britney's sharing of her gifts." -- Dr. David J. Johns, Executive Director, National Black Justice Coalition
About the Author:
Britney Daniels is a Black queer emergency-room nurse and social activist living in Chicago. This is her first book.