The introduction sets out the field of critical kinship studies and its relation to diaspora studies, black Atlantic studies and queer studies. It offers an overview of relevant works of diaspora and black Atlantic studies and queer studies, and how these fields are brought together in theorizations of queer diaspora. It then turns to the question of how to do critical kinship studies to suggest a double-pronged approach to the study of kinship. The study of kinship is both particularly interesting and particularly complex in postcolonial contexts, as kinship can be used both as a tool of colonial power and a means of anticolonial resistance, and the novels studied in this book suggest that kinship often does both.