Drawing the title for his debut collection of essays from Lil’ Wayne’s “A Milli,” Bey, a PhD candidate in English at Cornell University, uses his own experience as the basis for a groundbreaking meditation on and critique of politicized Blackness, Black feminism, and queerness. Adroitly toggling between academic and nonacademic discourse, Bey interweaves his Philadelphia upbringing and social justice work at the Audre Lorde Project with insightful examinations of Black studies and Black feminism theorists, showing how Blackness and non-normative gender don’t just challenge but actually change long-held assumptions.
Bey will be in conversation with Rahma Haji, doctoral student in the University of Maryland’s Department of Women’s Studies with an emphasis on African diasporic cultures, Afrofuturism, and performance studies.
