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This essay examines the epilogue of Revelation (22:8-21) as an intervention for new imaginations of, and actions toward, a new heaven and new earth that can be realized in the present. It names the ways that Revelation (indeed, the Bible) is used to make outsiders of queer people. More importantly it suggests that the author/narrator John is not the only one who can be filled with the spirit on the Lord(e)’s day with something to say to those “with ears to hear.” The particular “queer time and place” of this investigation occurs at the intersection of queers of color critique, theories of queer temporality, and Sankofa—the Akan concept that we take what is beneficial from the past in order to work toward a more pleasurable future. Composite sketches of the lives of queer folks in the African Diaspora are gathered to create a “deep archive” (following Judith Halberstam) from which Muñoz’s call for new visions of a utopian “then and there” can be articulated in resistance to their apocalyptic “here and now.” Consequently, a re-vision of the death-dealing epilogue can become a life-restoring prologue toward the enactment of Africana queer utopian futures outside of apocalyptic Christo-heteronormativity.

By the early 1990s, the losses of AIDS and the end of the Cold War displaced the gay and lesbian left and brought military inclusion to the forefront of an increasingly neoliberal LGBT rights movement. Though queer radicals continued to organize and the field of queer studies grew, neither fully recognized the contributions of the gay and lesbian left. However, new continuities have become apparent in recent queer radicalism and scholarship, especially those modes that foreground queer of color critique and trans critique. The gay and lesbian left's transformative and transnational commitments are echoed today through queer work against prisons, involvement in Palestinian solidarity, queer immigrant organizing, and especially in the Black Lives Matter movement.

“Aloha in Drag” investigates how Hawaiianness and aloha can be performed and felt in spaces where Hawaiianness is not obviously being performed or “confessed.” Looking at the performance strategies of Cocoa Chandelier, a well-known Hawaiian drag queen and performance artist working in Honolulu. Chandelier’s performances speak to a frequently marginalized Kānaka Maoli LGBT and local/settler LGBT population in Hawaiʻi, cultivating a shared sense of place and cultural belonging. These spaces allow the performance of aloha in drag, a performance of Hawaiianness that is unidentifiable to non-Hawaiian audiences, but can be deployed as a strategy to resist the ongoing subjection and hyper-commodification of Hawaiian indigeneity.