Inspired by botany and Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of the “rhizome/rhizomatic,” which emphasizes the creative, underground, multiple, and sometimes contradictory, Jafari S. Allen proposes “black/queer rhizomes.” The rhizome is the mode of propagation and sustenance for plants. Allen draws on this trope to read closely the important nodes of the recent past and present moment to theorize a “new and more possible meeting” of our artists, activists, scholars, policymakers, and intellectuals. The essay both builds on and departs from the terms and acronyms that denote nonheteronormative peoples of African descent to move beyond well-rehearsed narratives of being and push toward...