on the insignificance of bi visibility in ‘queen sugar’: the tame representation left me wanting more

By Ashley Monique Lee, AFROPUNK contributor

October graced us with the resumption of OWN’s Queen Sugar. In a television series exploring the contours of Black family life in rural Louisiana, and what it means to hold the density of generational trauma in the present day, I’m supportive of the depiction of queer sexuality—particularly through Nova Bordelon’s character.

Nova is layered. I’ve been meaning to engage in the process of unraveling with her. She commands and warms frames on screen: leading a spiritual healing session with sister, Charlie; caring for nephew, Micah, during parental separation and encounter with the police; caring for mentee, Too Sweet, and being emotionally available to him during and after incarceration; and vocalizing her politic as a panelist, interviewee, or friend, unashamedly.

Nova commands and warms even when embracing white married police officer turned ex-boyfriend in the multi-brightness of bar.

Yet, I want to yell at the screen in reaction to the latter and her believing in the possibility of police reform coinciding with Black community healing.

I want to recreate warmth after hearing her say she feels free amid sunrise, sheets, and greenery with Chantal.

Nova is questionable. Aren’t we all?

The manner in which queer sexuality is presented—through the sensual and intense brevity of two Black women invested in serving their communities—is unfulfilling and unsuccessful, especially when paired with the provocative, meaningful, and steady portraits of heterosexuality. We saw the latter with Nova and Calvin over the course of thirteen episodes. We’re now seeing this with Nova and Robert DuBois over the course of five. 

Robert and Chantal are featured in the same number of episodes, yet we have uneven insight into both characters. The numerical value of episodes isn’t the sole decider in assessing the impact of character visibility and their relation to Nova, but it undoubtedly shapes our understanding in deciphering between which characters we should expect to invest in, and which characters we should treat as insignificant. Replaceable. Transitionary.

In other words, although Chantal and Robert share the same episode count thus far, what does it mean to devote several quality moments of airtime indulging in the normalization of accumulated straightness, and offer a minimal and fleeting exploration of queerness?

I don’t believe Chantal is unworthy of Nova’s time, and unworthy of our time.

In a show I highly respect and trust in regularly depicting holistic and moving explorations of multiplicitous blackness, I want to witness, then linger in a level of sustained complexity in the treatment of Black bisexuality through lesbianism. I want to delve into the impact of Nova and Chantal through effective layering. 

Witnessing the first season’s presentation of Black woman journalist caring for Black woman community organizer, then lingering in this, looks like scenes with Chantal Williams interacting with Nova’s familiar: loving in domesticity, continuing to relationship build with Micah, meeting Aunt Vi, confronting family and local politics surrounding sugar cane farm. 

This sophistication takes shape through delving in moments when Nova and Chantal sift through their different approaches in liberation work—over the course of lengthy and productive dialogue and scene, over the course of several episodes—in ways we’re currently accessing with Nova and Robert. This sophistication means allowing for the major disagreement between Nova and Chantal to enact discoveries and convey deeper sensibilities in their way of navigating a destructively cyclical social landscape, well into season two. It means allowing Nova to inhabit moments in Chantal’s familiar. 

The depth of scene through sophistication initiates growth, and growth is the emergence of rigorous and complicated understandings of what it means to function in harmony and discord with the communities we struggle with, and for. 

I’m interested in this form of witnessing, lingering, and delving. This form doesn’t include allowing Chantal to re-emerge, episodes later, as a seemingly problematic and attitude-bearing ex in the walls of a community meeting, and in the foyer of Nova’s home. 

I don’t want to witness a queer Black woman cemented in reduction. An indicator of romantic marginality. 

I’m interested in the writers of Queen Sugar furthering and complicating Nova’s relationship with bisexuality. In a series intimately engaging in the sublime and the contradictory, I’d like the storyline of Nova’s romantic encounters functioning around her relationship with Chantal and other women, and not what the show currently presents—same gender relationship as temporary locality to arrive at heteronormativity.