“It means freedom”: A qualitative exploration of joy among black queer folx

The focus of this article is to examine queer joy as a foil to the deficit-saturated literature on Black queer folks in social and behavioral sciences. Leveraging an intersectionality framework, the authors employed reflexive thematic analysis to evaluate a study of Black queer joy among a sample of 241 Black queer people living in the United States. Participants indicated that Black queer joy is related to celebrating oneself. Black queer joy is also linked to feelings of social connectedness and being liberated to live authentically in community. The findings from the study extend current understandings of joy from a psychological perspective and could inform prospective work developing culturally-informed interventions to facilitate Black queer joy in positive psychological research.