Got Blood to Give

Book excerpt: Our blood has stories to tell, and we are told stories about blood. Globally, blood is a story that is built — whose blood counts, whose blood spills and whose blood is of use. The history of blood donation practices in Canada speaks to the larger blood story of anti-Black racism, evident since the country’s founding. Through storytelling, theorizing and discourse analysis, Got Blood to Give examines how anti-Black homophobic nation-building policies became enshrined in blood donation systems. OmiSoore H. Dryden, a Black queer femme academic and the foremost scholar on Canadian blood donation practices, examines contaminated blood crises in the 1980s and 1990s, Canadian Red Cross Society, and Canadian Blood Services. She contextualizes contemporary homonationalisms, medical anti-Black racism, homophobia and transphobia in blood-related practices, connecting blood stories with health disparities affecting Black and Black queer populations. From a BlaQueer disasporic theoretical lens, this book uses narrative as method to show how healthcare systems continue to propagate anti-Blackness.