Join the Center for the Study of Women and Society for a book reading by author Nessette Falu (pronouns she/her), whose new book Unseen Flesh explores how Black lesbians in Brazil define and sustain their well-being and self-worth against persistent racial, sexual, class, and gender-based prejudice.

Nessette Falu (pronouns she/her) is a Black queer feminist anthropologist and assistant professor of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her book entitled, Unseen Flesh: Gynecology and Black Queer Worth Making in Brazil (2023, Duke University Press), argues that Black lesbians enforce wellbeing against intersectional intimate violence in gynecology, leading them to evaluate, protect, and chart their sense of worth within these spaces and draw upon their daily sense of worth making. Her research lab, Gxnecologx Justice Lab, designs evidence-based multimedia resources and visual materials for community engagement about Black queer reproductive health and justice such as medical illustrations. Her current manuscript examines through a Black feminist lens the extensive sexual violence by gynecologists in the U.S. and its sociohistorical ties to the history of medicine and slavery that serves to undermine racial and gendered vulnerabilities of patients. She partners with allgo, a POC queer organization in Austin to develop community-based participatory research as part of a mentoring program with the Dell Medical School and Population Health Department at UT Austin. She enjoyed a seventeen-year clinical career as a Physician Assistant in neurosurgery, internal medicine, HIV-specialty, hematology-oncology, and pain management. She loves lakes, rivers, and the ocean.

Many thanks to our co sponsors: the Center for Latin American Iberian and Latino Cultures, the Center for Humanities, the Center for LGBTQ Studies, and the CUNY Graduate Center Anthropology and Critical Psychology departments