We Have More Stories to Tell

Living in the United States has made me think differently about home, belonging, and what we owe one another as Black LGBTQ+ people. Being in community with other Black queer people here, sharing joy and hearing their stories, has helped me recognize parts of my own experience in lives that look different from mine.

Being away from Nigeria has not made the lives of queer people back home feel any less urgent. Instead, it has made me think more about the connections between our lives, even when our circumstances differ. We share a desire to love without fear, sometimes complicated relationships with family, evolving spiritual practices, friendships that become family, and the joy of finding people who understand without needing an explanation. Still, where we live and the histories we carry matter. A Black queer person in Lagos does not move through the world in the same way as someone in Minneapolis, London, or Kingston. Our passports, incomes, gender identities, and the laws around us shape what is possible, and what it costs to be visible.

These parallels can be hard to recognize when so many of our encounters, especially online, devolve into arguments over who belongs, who has suffered more, or who gets to speak. I see them in tensions between Africans and Black Americans, in debates about the diaspora, and in divisions within our LGBTQ+ communities. Some of those disagreements reflect real wounds that deserve attention. But we lose something when they become the only way we understand each other. That is part of why I want The Rustin Times back because I believe that it can make room for us to see each other more fully.

When I think about the work we did, I am constantly beaming with pride. I think about the personal accounts we published, such as folks sharing their experiences of a police raid in Lagos, and the stories of hope I got to share, like my visit to an LGBTQ+ affirming church in Nairobi, Kenya. Those accounts gave people room to describe their lives in their own words, with details and feelings that a headline alone could never capture.

I want to get back to that work: listening closely, documenting carefully, and giving readers a chance to encounter Black queer lives beyond their own, and maybe see a little of themselves along the way.

What we started

I founded The Rustin Times in 2017 because I believed our stories deserved sustained attention. Lives, ideas, and conversations needed space, and I wanted to help create it. We published stories about Black LGBTQ+ people across Africa and the diaspora. We built a community of readers and were named finalists in the NOW-Us! Awards and the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum Innovation Lab. I remain proud of that work and the people who made it possible.

Then we paused.

There were several reasons for the pause, but the biggest was financial. Running a media platform requires resources: time to report, people to write and edit, money to maintain the infrastructure, and the capacity to keep showing up. Believing deeply in the work does not eliminate those needs, and I want to be honest about that because it shapes how we return. I do not want to make promises that enthusiasm alone cannot sustain. I want us to be realistic about what we can take on, give that work the care it deserves, and grow as we build the support to keep going. The pause did not change my faith in the importance of The Rustin Times because I do not want this platform to die. But I also knew we needed to address the reasons we stopped if we were going to return. That left me with a question: what would it take to do this again in a way that was both meaningful and manageable?

Why solidarity matters

Part of the answer was getting clearer about why this work matters. For me, that comes back to solidarity. When I talk about solidarity across the Black diaspora, I don’t just mean that we share an identity. I mean taking an interest in one another before a crisis calls for it. Reading work from places we have never visited, supporting the people already organizing in their communities, sharing resources where we can, and listening when someone tells us the help they need looks different from what we imagined.

In 2021, after LGBT+ Rights Ghana’s community center in Accra was forced to close, solidarity crossed borders. Edward Enninful, Idris Elba, Naomi Campbell, and dozens of other public figures of Ghanaian heritage signed an open letter of support published in The Guardian. At home, Ghanaian feminists declared their support for LGBTQ+ Ghanaians. People refused to let the loudest homophobic voices speak for an entire country. To me, that matters because it challenges the idea that concern for queer Africans must come from somewhere outside our communities. We are part of these communities. We have families, histories, languages, and connections that don’t disappear because someone decides we don’t belong.

There is also solidarity in creating opportunities to see and hear one another. In August 2020, Pride Afrique brought together LGBTQ+ Africans on the continent and in the diaspora for a three-day virtual event, and we covered it at the time. Its programming made room for personal experiences, celebration, and conversations about rights. That example feels especially relevant to the work I want The Rustin Times to do. Stories can introduce us to people whose lives we might otherwise know only through headlines. They can help us recognize shared concerns while also learning what is specific to someone else’s experience.

None of this requires us to pretend our communities are free of prejudice or disagreement. We still have work to do on nationality, class, gender, sexuality, and which voices we consider worth hearing. And living abroad does not mean any of us understand a situation better than the people navigating it every day.

For me, solidarity means staying in relationship, being accountable, and refusing to make belonging conditional on sameness.

The urgency, and the fullness of our lives

That kind of solidarity matters more now, because in too many places our lives have become a political target. In Nigeria, the Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act extends far beyond marriage, criminalizing participation in gay organizations and public displays of same-sex affection. In Uganda, the Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2023 expanded criminalization and introduced the death penalty for the offense it calls “aggravated homosexuality.” In Ghana, the ongoing push for more punitive anti-LGBTQ+ legislation shows how readily our lives can become a political project.

It is painful to watch politicians speak about protecting society while treating some of the people who make up that society as a threat. I think about what it means to hear our lives discussed that way, then still go to work, find somewhere to live, keep our relationships, and make plans for the future. That is why we will keep reporting on these laws, and on the people living with their consequences. Speaking truth to power means listening to them first.

We also need to tell the rest of the story.

Across the continent and the diaspora, Black queer people are making art, building friendships, organizing, falling in love, and building spaces to gather. They are making things shake and making things work, often with fewer resources than they deserve. I want to know what they are making. What they are thinking about. What brings them joy. What they want to change. Our journalism should make room for ordinary life, too. We should not have to experience something terrible or achieve something outstanding before our lives are worth documenting. This responsibility goes beyond the next news cycle. What we publish becomes part of the record people will use to understand us. That record should hold our imagination and humor, our disagreements and tenderness, alongside the struggles we face.

How we are coming back

The Rustin Times returns with a clearer commitment: a global home for Black queer storytelling.

Our coverage will continue to connect Africa, the Caribbean, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Black queer communities worldwide, told on those communities’ own terms. We will begin at a pace we can keep because we believe in giving a story the time and attention it needs and building consistency gradually. Our work will live across five sections: News, Culture, Essays and Opinion, Interviews, and Community. Together, they give us room to report on what is happening, engage with what people are creating, and think openly about the questions shaping our lives.

We write as members of these communities, carrying the responsibilities that come with that closeness. We will celebrate, ask difficult questions, verify what we publish, and make room for disagreement. Caring about our communities should improve the quality of our journalism.

I want The Rustin Times to be useful to the people who read it. A place to discover someone’s work, understand an issue more clearly, encounter a different perspective, or find words for something you have felt yourself.

An invitation

As we move into this new iteration of our work, we want to encourage you to stay connected. Sign up for our newsletter so you get new stories first directly to your inbox. Engage with the stories we publish and also share the stories that move you. Tell us about the people and work we should be paying attention to. Share an idea. Reach out to collaborate or help sustain the platform. Finally, follow us on Instagram, as we will also be leaning into more digital-forward content.

I am returning to this work with a better understanding of what it takes and with the same belief that motivated me in 2017: our lives deserve attention, and there is value in telling our stories with care. So much is happening across our communities, and I want us to keep a record of it and to know one another better along the way.

The Rustin Times is back. Let’s keep telling our stories.

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