[2] BQSW contains Johnson's account of seventy-six different interviews he conducted with women in the American South who felt same-sex desire.

A review in QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking praised Johnson for the way he navigated the situations in which he, as a man coming from a place of potential power, conducted interviews with lesbian and queer women, as well as the way he prioritized recording oral history as opposed to analyze it in search of an ultimate "truth".

Ultimately, the reviewer described BQSW as an "important text" which provided "a well-rounded understanding of black queer women's experience in the South".

Stallings, was overall positive towards the book, saying that BQSW "provide[d] a welcome and necessary lens into how black women persevere and create the communities they need to live in the South".

However, they also felt that the collection would have been stronger had it provided more stories from younger queer black women in the American South.