African Diasporic Queer Womxn of Color Navigating Religion and Spirituality
Open Access DepositedA Narrative Inquiry
African Diasporic queer womxn of color
counseling research
spirituality
intersectionality
religion
queer of color critique
reflexive thematic analysis
ancestral spirituality
narrative inquiry
African Diasporic queer womxn of color (QWoC) remain largely underrepresented in counseling and counselor education research, particularly within scholarship examining religion and spirituality. Existing literature often centers white LGBTQIA+ populations or approaches religion primarily through frameworks of trauma, minority stress, and identity conflict, overlooking the complex ways intersecting identities shape spiritual meaning-making for QWoC. This qualitative study sought to explore how African Diasporic queer womxn of color experience and navigate their identities within religious and spiritual practices. The study was guided by Intersectionality Theory and Queer of Color Critique (QOCC), which together emphasize the interconnected nature of race, gender, sexuality, and sociopolitical forces shaping lived experience. Using narrative inquiry, the study centered the stories of nine African Diasporic queer womxn of color who participated as co-collaborators in semi-structured interviews, who were located around the United States and Canada. Analysis revealed seven co-constructed themes and two subthemes describing how co-collaborators conceptualize and navigate religion and spirituality. These themes included conceptualizations of religion as a human-constructed system of restriction and control, authenticity and decolonial empowerment, embodied Black womanhood as an intersectional grounding, sacred healing relationships and community, intentional practices of safety and self-recognition, reconnection to ancestral knowledge and cultural traditions, and holistic decolonial approaches to healing. Findings suggest that African Diasporic QWoC often differentiate between institutional religion and personal spirituality, redefining spirituality as a liberatory process rooted in ancestral knowledge, cultural continuity, and self-authorship. Through acts of resistance, community building, and spiritual reinterpretation, co-collaborators cultivated spaces that affirmed their intersecting identities while challenging colonial, heteronormative, and patriarchal religious structures. Keywords
decolonial healing
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PerryWilson_gwu_0075A_17868.pdf | 2026-06-24 | Open Access |
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