The greatest taboo : homosexuality in Black communities / edited by Delroy Constanine-Simms ; with a foreword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Constantine-Simms, Delroy.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African American gay people.

African Americans--Attitudes.

African Americans.

Homophobia--United States.

Homophobia.

Homosexuality.

United States.

African American churches.

African American arts.

Homosexuality--Africa.

Africa.

Genre:

Aufsatzsammlung.

Physical Description:

xx, 460 pages ; 23 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Los Angeles, CA : Alyson Books, 2001.

Summary:

Does Homosexuality Remain the Greatest Taboo in Black Culture? Is Homosexuality a European Cultural Imposition on Africans? Are You Black First or Queer? Delroy Constantine-Simms has compiled 28 powerful, provocative essays from academics and writers of all ethnic heritages, genders, and sexualities, including bell hooks, Earl Ofari Hutchinson. Seth Clark Silberman, Gregory Conerly, and Gloria Wekker, to explore the often volatile relationship black gay men and lesbians share with others.

Of their race. The sweeping scope of The Greatest Taboo runs the gamut from a critical look at 19th-century slave quarters to postapartheid South Africa; from RuPaul to Wu-Tang Clan; from 1920s Harlem to 1995's Million Man March on Washington, providing a clear-eyed social, cultural, political, and historical view of both the transformation and continued repression of black lesbians and gay men. Academically rigorous yet intellectually accessible. The Greatest Taboo seeks to stimulate a.

Lively discourse and foster greater understanding of this internationally important, vastly misunderstood, and fascinating area of study. Book jacket.

Contents:

My gay problem, your black problem / Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Are you black first or are you queer? / Gregory Conerly

Can the queen speak? Racial essentialism, sexuality, and the problem of authority / Dwight A. McBride

Safety among strangers: the million man march / Townsand Price-Spratlen

Homophobia in black communities / Bell Hooks

Is homosexuality the greatest taboo? / Delroy Constantine-Simms

Feeling the spirit in the dark : expanding notions of the sacred in the African American gay community / E. Patrick Johnson

Their own received them not : African American lesbians and gays in black churches / Horace Griffin.

Heart of lavender / Eugene J. Patron

Hearing voices : unearthing evidence of homosexuality in precolonial Africa / Cary Alan Johnson

Mati-ism and black lesbianism : two idealtypical expressions of female homosexuality in black communities of the diaspora / Gloria Wekker

Institutionalizing sexuality : theorizing queer in post-apartheid South Africa / Vasu Reddy

How RuPaul works : signifying and contextualizing the mythic black [drag queen] mother / Seth Clark Silberman

Creations of fantasies/constructions of identities : the oppositional lives of Gladys Bentley / Carmen Mitchell

Black men in the mix : badboys, heroes, sequins, and Dennis Rodman / Lindon Barrett.

Lighting the Harlem Renaissance AFire!! : embodying Richard Bruce Nugent's Bohemian politic / Seth Clark Silberman

The lives of Richmond Barthé / Margaret Rose Vendryes

Any love : silence, theft, and rumor in the work of Luther Vandross / Jason King

Hip hop's closet : a fanzine article touches a nerve / Touré

Bessie Smith : one of the first divas / Kennette Crockett

The house the kids built : the gay black imprint on American dance music / Anthony Thomas

A feisty female rapper breaks the hip-hop taboo / Laura Jamison

Rereading voices from the past : images of homo-eroticism in the slave narrative / Charles Clifton

Envisioning lives : homosexuality and black popular literature / Craig Seymour

Swishing and swaggering : homosexuality in black magazines during the 1950s / Gregory Conerly

Eloquence and epitaph : black nationalism and the homophobic response the death of Max Robinson / Philip Brian Harper

Containing AIDS : Magic Johnson and post-Reagan America / Cheryl L. Cole.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

Lambda Literary Awards - Anthologies/Non-Fiction, Winner, 2002

Other Format:

Online version: Greatest taboo.

ISBN:

1555835643

9781555835644

OCLC:

44951992