Queer Love in Color

by Jamal Jordan

A photographic celebration of the love and relationships of queer people of color by a former  New York Times multimedia journalist

“Thank you, Jamal Jordan, for showing the world what true love looks like.”—Billy Porter

Queer Love in Color features photographs and stories of couples and families across the United States and around the world. This singular, moving collection offers an intimate look at what it means to live at the intersections of queer and POC identities today, and honors an inclusive vision of love, affection, and family across the spectrum of gender, race, and age.

Genres: LGBT, Nonfiction, Queer, Photography, Race, Gender and Sexuality, Art

224 pages, Hardcover

First published May 4, 2021

Reviews

[BookOfCinz · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I never saw Black queer people as objects of desire... I never thought that someone would want to love me or someone who looked like me. I thought for a very long time that my only hope in finding companionship was to convince a white person to love me." - Aimee

Queer Love In Colour is photography collection filled with queer love from across the world. The photographer and writer Jamal Jordan travelled across the world to meet queer couples and their families for this project and what a beautiful project.

I love love and reading these stories were moving and truly beautiful. I think this is a celebration of Queer Coloured love and I enjoyed every piece of it! What a truly great collection.

[Quinn Benson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved reading stories of approximately 200 couples highlighted in this book. The couples were all queer, people of color, and a broad range of age, size, and gender expression. These types of love stories are not often told, so it was great to see them represented in this coffee table style book.

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The style of this is "coffee table book", with lots of colorful pictures and a relatively small amount of text. The people pictured are mostly from North American cities; some are from South Africa.

Very nice and I hope to see more from this author/photographer.

[J Kuria · Rating 4 out of 5]

“And to every queer person of color who reads this book: May we never feel invisible again.”

The queer joy in this! Ugh. A sad, lonely b*tch has hope for the future.

[Bri · Rating 4 out of 5]

I smiled a lot ☺️

[Courtney · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such a beautiful and important book. I think honestly it’s important for black and brown folks to see healthy relationships in general. I feel all too often as of late I see constant depictions of abusive relationships in films and books. And honestly we don’t need those repeated visuals of trauma.

What is needed is a point of reference for healthy relationships. What does that actually look like? Feel like? How do I know what‘s healthy versus the dissociation of having dealt with abuse physically and/or mentally all your life? And how do I accept something like love into my life when it’s been the exact opposite? This book helps to guide queer folks in navigating these waters through personal stories- to give a point of reference where there generally have been none and I’m-here-for-it. 🙌🏼

Thank you Jamal.

[Shanreadsnwrites · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, moving, riveting - a book everyone has to read. You’ll laugh, cry, and see the amazing resilience of queer couples of color. My heart is so full after reading this and it’s so good to hear true Black, AAPI, & Latinx queer love stories that society so often overlooks ! A great photo journalist piece, a must-read for Pride month (and every month).

[DNS · Rating 5 out of 5]

"You exist in this world. You don’t have to hide yourself. You can be authentically, 100 percent yourself and aspire to do what you want and find love and live your life unapologetically and unashamed."

Thank you, thank you, thank you very much, for this book, Jamal Jordan.

You made me cry. I was crying and smiling at the same time. I drank happy tears. I hope you know how much of an impact you made on the hearts of people like me. I think that's one of the greatest things in the world. To give hope, even to a stranger. 

As someone who had to grow up in a very toxic environment, it is rare for me to experience love. But through those photographers, those words, something woke up within me. 

Maybe for the first time, I realized I can love and be loved despite what I've been through.

[Siani · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned of this book when Jamal Jordan first announced it, following his journalism. Since then, I've seen it teased through the story of Mike and Phil. To flash forward to now and finally read their story, and over 200 pages of others, this experience was absolutely worth it. Each story shared solidified that love is real in all its forms and that queer people of color can have their happy endings. Not everyone's life was easy, but there is a sense of triumph in how each individual carries themself and their devotion to their partner. While there were parallels, no one story was the same and there was such a beauty to read the uniquities of the human experience. I'm grateful to all who participated to have trusted the author and the readers with their stories for they are a beacon of hope. I hope that each person involved is safe and happy.

[Schwarzer_Elch · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Queer Love in Color” es el resultado del trabajo realizado por Jamal Jordan, un hombre gay afrodescendiente, que, durante su infancia, nunca encontró personas como él a las que mirar y tomar como modelos a seguir. Esta falta de representatividad lo motivó, durante su vida adulta, a salir a las calles de Estados Unidos, Canadá y Sudáfrica a buscar historias reales de amor protagonizadas por personas queer de color. Así, a lo largo de sus páginas, “Queer Love in Color” nos ofrece diferentes visiones del amor a través de los ojos de personas que, al igual que el infante Jamal, no tuvieron a dónde mirar y, ahora, esperan poder inspirar a otres y hacerles saber que pueden ser queer, de color y, aún así, amar y ser amades.

[Corri Latapy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was amazing. One thing that stuck out to me was they way Jamal posted in the heading, how long the couple was together from. The reason i think this is important is because it highlights that there ARE long term queer relationships which goes against the widespread hookup culture that is usually portrayed.

It was also lovely to see the differences in acceptance through countries, communities, family and self.

The conclusion and acknowledgements were pretty funny and it gave some insight into Jamal's process

[Emily Ann Reeves · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I think the reason a lot of movements, political or social, are not successful, is that they aren’t tied to a spiritual shift in the individual. We have to be personally transformed in order to change the world. Because if we’re only responding out of anger or fear, then there can be no true transformation of ourselves or the world around us. If you want to change the world, it has to be lodged in something positive. It has to be lodged in love. And your vision of the future has to be based on hope.”

[Jordan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an impactful read! Journalist and photographer, Jamal Jordan, travels the world interviewing queer POC couples about their experiences and relationships. One of the central questions is "how do we unlearn the negative things the world has taught us about ourselves?" It's clear that this process is a journey, and each couple is at a different stop on this trip. Through the pain there is such immense beauty. It's hard to feel alone as a queer black woman while reading this book.

[Casey Peel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book made me smile over and over and over again. As a gay man, I love seeing queer people in love and this book is full of exactly that. While the book is geared towards queer people of color, I think it's equally important for queer white people, like me, to see a wider, richer array of our community and hear their stories.

The photos are a key part of this book, so make sure and get hold of a physical copy of it!

[Brooke · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was Beautiful, do read.

I loved how insightful it was, it gave me some hope. As a black bi woman it made me feel seen. Today people want you to look a certain way to show your gay, not to mention how hard it is for me being bi. This book made me feel important and beautiful even more. I don’t have to convince anyone anything, be me and love freely. It was also great to see people who looked like me. It’s also interesting to see religious LGBTQ, that’s a first for me, I don’t understand it, but I love their strength. Definitely, this book is a must read.

[rayon · Rating 2 out of 5]

this author means queer as in a conglomerate of sexual orientation, not queer as in the rich political history of struggle against militarised state. this is depicted by a 'neutral' vantage point which includes couples whose careers are steeped in violence under the guise of representation (one of the couple is a police couple), this shows a lack of understanding of the word queer in and of itself and the liberal backwash that can assume a sort of spineless fence-sitting that is really steeped in heteronormativity. very geared towards replicating cisessentialist structures. the only poly throuple are given less than a page but marriage is often pulled out in detail. one star because some of the stories were interesting but from the title i should have known that this would have been an exercise of homogenisation under the guise of identity politics. i enjoyed seeing darkskin lesbian, gay and trans couples don't get me wrong but including military and police couples without so much as a footnote is a dismantling of everything that queerness stands for and is. the book should have been called LGBT+ Love. Even the use of 'Colour' makes my stomach turn as a term that aggregates non-whiteness. Anyway this sort of stuff is to be expected from a liberal and I did enjoy some of the images.

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a lovely celebration of queer couples! I liked the biography/how we met vignettes, but wished they had been longer. This book is such a powerful affirmation of queer love in communities of color and it's especially needed now. I'll be donating my copy to our local queer library so that more people who need it can find it.

[CJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jordan's portraits and interviews of gay, lesbian and transgender couples of color in the U.S., Canada and South Africa are beautiful and touching, and a much needed corrective to a whitewashed view of the lgbtq community. I hope to see more of his work in the future.

[L. Flores · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every BIPOC person needs this. Allies need this. The world can only benefit from seeing all the diverse, beautiful ways to love. This book will make you feel things you never knew you could feel! It will generate empathy and compassion in you. It is simply a must-read.

[ABTony · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful montage of love through images and perhaps the most worth while words I’ve read in a photography collection. I think Jamal met his goal and I hope as many queer people as possible get to touch this book.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful. Powerful. Eye-opening.
This book is going to do and be exactly what it set out to do: Be hope. Share examples of love and loving.
The couples' stories really add to the portraits.

[Gregg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Moving and inspiring stories of queer couples.

[RaeAnna Rekemeyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Phenomenal book about love in the queer community of color around the world.

https://onthebl.org/2021/07/15/pride-...

[Christina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a beautiful, beautiful book

[Jess Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

Made me cry at least ten times. Powerful stories that inspire

[Breanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really beautiful tribute to the types of love that we don’t see represented in the mainstream.

[Karrecia Crawley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I did not want to put this down. All of the couples were cute and I loved reading about their love, trials, & tribulations. ❤️

[MJ Strayer · Rating 5 out of 5]

ABSOLUTELY LOVED THIS BOOK!!!

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful work.

[Mallory Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really beautiful ♥️ glad this exists for those who truly need it!