In this searing, honest memoir, a Black queer emergency-room nurse works the front lines of care during COVID-19.
“Can I have a white nurse?” the patient asked Britney Daniels.
“Sorry ma''am,” Britney replied, “we are fresh out of white nurses.”
Britney Daniels is a Black, masculine-presenting, tattooed lesbian from a working-class background. For the last five years, she has been working as an emergency-room nurse. She began Journal of a Black Queer Nurse as a personal diary, a tool to heal from the day-to-day traumas of seeing too much and caring too much.
We are fortunate that Daniels is now willing to share these stories with us. Hilarious, gut-wrenching, and infuriating by turns, these stories, told from the perspective of a deeply empathetic, no-nonsense young nurse, make visible the way race, inequality, and a profit-driven healthcare system make the hos