Red Emma’s

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.

Hilarious, gut-wrenching, and infuriating by turns, these stories are told from the perspective of a deeply empathetic, no-nonsense young nurse, who highlights the way race, inequality, and a profit-driven healthcare system make the hospital a place where systemic racism is lived.

Whether it is giving one’s own clothes to a homeless patient, sticking up for patients of color in the face of indifference from white doctors and nurses, or nursing one’s own back pain accrued from transporting too many bodies as the morgues overflowed during the pandemic, Journal of a Black Queer Nurse reveals the ways in which care is much more than treating a physical body and how the commitment to real care—care that involves listening to and understanding patients in a deeper sense—demands nurses, especially nurses of color, must also be warriors.

“Britney Daniels' voice is one of the most important you will hear all year. This book is not only a testament to the resilience of our nation's hardest-working lifesavers but also a reminder of the essentiality of centering Black queer voices in our national discourse. Britney's greatest gift is the reminder that positivity, perseverance, empathy, and compassion always prevail over the forces that try to divide and oppress, and that love is the universal truth that will lead each of us to find happiness.” — Jeremy Blacklow, former Director of Entertainment, GLAAD