Fugitive State: Toward a Cimarrona Approach for Florida Cultural Studies

This essay engages the activism of Oluwatoyin “Toyin” Salau, along with Black feminist cultural productions such as the 2019 song “Almeda” by Solange and Melina Matsoukas’s 2019 film Queen and Slim, to offer a cimarrona approach for practicing Florida study. The cimarrona is a rebellious being who can lead us to apply a radical lens for understanding life, freedom struggles, and death in Florida—one that underscores the refusal of Blackness, which we can understand as a form of fugitivity. I argue that these Black feminist works evoke Florida as a Black Atlantic site and freedom route.