Journal of a Black Queer Nurse, Britney Daniels

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Journal of a Black Queer Nurse

Paperback · May 9, 2023
by Britney Daniels

A searing, funny, and deeply human memoir from the front lines of care.

Written during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Journal of a Black Queer Nurse is an unfiltered account of survival, labor, and love inside an American emergency room. Britney Daniels, a Black, masculine-presenting, tattooed lesbian from a working-class background, began this book as a private diary—a way to process the relentless trauma of caring for too many patients, with too few resources, in a system that often fails the most vulnerable.

What emerges is a powerful portrait of modern nursing as both calling and combat. Daniels writes candidly about giving her own clothes to unhoused patients, advocating for people of color dismissed by white doctors and nurses, and enduring the physical toll of transporting bodies as morgues overflowed. With sharp humor and righteous anger, she exposes how systemic racism, class inequality, and profit-driven healthcare policies turn hospitals into sites where injustice is lived daily.

At once hilarious, gut-wrenching, and infuriating, these entries reveal the emotional cost of empathy—and the strength required to keep showing up anyway. Daniels argues that real care goes far beyond treating symptoms; it demands listening, witnessing, and fighting for patients’ dignity. For nurses—especially nurses of color—this work requires becoming warriors as much as healers.

Journal of a Black Queer Nurse is an essential memoir of the pandemic era and a testament to the radical power of care, truth-telling, and survival in a world built to break the people holding it together.