Solidão is a concept from Black Brazilian Gender Studies that does not have a US Black feminist or queer of color equivalent, nor does it translate into a single word in the English language. It describes shared isolation as an affective relational phenomenon with meanings as multiple as there are Black women. Solidão is inherent to the experiences of Black women considering the historical, social, and racial vectors that traverse individual experiences.

But how do you frame intersectional theory with Afro-Atlantic and African knowledge production outside of the United States? This issue of the award-winning women’s studies journal WSQ makes connections between work by feminists of color in the worlds of affective and political theory, across languages and geopolitical borders that circulated any time between the sixteenth and twenty-first centuries.