A new understanding of freedom in the black diaspora grounded in the erotic In Frottage Keguro Macharia weaves together histories and theories of blackness and sexuality to generate a fundamentally new understanding of both the black diaspora and queer studies. Macharia maintains that to reach this understanding we must start from the black diaspora which requires rethinking not only the historical and theoretical utility of identity categories such as gay lesbian and bisexual but also more foundational categories such as normative and nonnormative human and nonhuman. Simultaneously Frottage questions the heteronormative tropes through which the black diaspora has been imagined. Between Frantz Fanon Ren Maran Jomo Kenyatta and Claude McKay Macharia moves through genrespsychoanalysis fiction anthropology poetryas well as regional geohistories across Africa and Afrodiaspora to map the centrality of sex gender desire and eroticism to black freedom struggles. In lyrical meditative prose Macharia invigorates frottage as both metaphor and method with which to rethink diaspora by reading and reading against discomfort vulnerability and pleasure.