Excavating Black Queer Thought: A Pride Bibliography

To close out Pride Month 2019, I compiled a list of texts ranging from traditional academic works to cultural texts, like films and tv shows, that center Black queerness, illuminating the multiplicity of experiences that exist within Black LGBTQIA+ life and excavating histories of Black queer life and thought that have been intentionally excluded and overlooked. Though this list is in no way an exhaustive one, comprising all texts in some way related to Black queerness, it includes some texts that are foundational to the field(s) of Black Queer Studies and Queer of Color Critique, as well more recent works that build on the theories and frameworks offered in the foundational texts from a variety of angles. I hope that this list reflects the ways that Black feminist and Black queer studies have created and propagated alternative epistemologies–ways of knowing and means of producing knowledge(s)– within institutions that often deem personal narratives and experiences as insignificant and outside in the hostile world.

• Bailey, Marlon. Butch Queens Up in Pumps: Gender, Performance, and Ballroom Culture in Detroit. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013.
• Baldwin, James. Go Tell It on the Mountain. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953.
• Baldwin, James. Giovanni’s Room. New York: Penguin Random House, 1957.
• Beam, Joseph. In the Life: A Black Gay Anthology. New York: Alyson Books, 1986.
• Bey, Marquise. Them Goon Rules: Fugitive Essays on Radical Black Feminism. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2019.
• Bost, Darius. Evidence of Being: The Black Gay Cultural Renaissance and the Politics of Violence. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019.
• Callier, Durrell, Hill, Dominique C. Who Look At Me?: Shifting the Gaze of Education through Blackness, Queerness, and the Body. Netherlands: Brill Publishing, 2019.
• Capo Jr., Julio. Welcome to Fairyland: Queer Miami before 1940. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017.
• Carruthers, Charlene A. Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements. Boston: Beacon Press, 2018.
• Ellis, Nadia. Territories of the Soul: Queered Belonging in the Black Diaspora. Durham: Duke University Press, 2016.
• Ferguson, Roderick A. Aberrations in Black: Towards a Queer of Color Critique. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.
• Gill, Lyndon K. Erotic Islands: Art and Activism in the Queer Caribbean. Durham: Duke University Press, 2018.
• Gumbs, Alexis Pauline. Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity. Durham: Duke University Press, 2016.
• Hemphill, Essex. Ceremonies: Prose and Poetry. New York: Plume Publishing, 1992.
• Johnson, E. Patrick, Henderson, Mae G. Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005.
• Johnson, E. Patrick, Rivera-Servera, Ramón H. Blacktino Queer Performance. Durham: Duke University Press, 2016.
• Johnson, E. Patrick. Black. Queer. Southern. Women.: An Oral History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018.
• Lorde, Audre. Zami: A New Spelling of my Name. New York: Crossing Press, 1982.
• Lorde, Audre. The Black Unicorn. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1995 (reissue).
• Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde with a Foreword by Cheryl Clarke. New York: Penguin Random House, 2007.
• McCune, Jeffrey Q. Sexual Discretion: Black Masculinity and the Politics of Passing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014.
• Mock, Janet. Surpassing Certainty: What My Twenties Taught Me. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017.
• Moore, Darnell. No Ashes in the Fire. New York: Nation Books, 2018.
• Mumford, Kevin. Not Straight, Not White: Black Gay Men from the March on Washington to the AIDS Crisis. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016.
• Muñoz, José Esteban, Letson-Chambers, Joshua, Nyong’o, Tavia, and Pellegrini, Ann. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity 10^thAnniversary Edition. New York: New York University Press, 2019.
• Nyong’o, Tavia. Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life. New York: New York University Press, 2018.
• Perry, Imani. Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry. Boston: Beacon Press, 2018.
• Rosenberg, Rosalind. Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
• Smith, Barbara. Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology. New York: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1983.
• Snorton, C. Riley. Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017.
• Stewart, Jeffrey C. The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
• Strongman, Roberto. Queering Black Atlantic Religions: Transcorporeality in Candomblé Santería, and Vodou. Durham: Duke University Press, 2019.
• Tinsley, Omise’eke Natasha. Thiefing Sugar: Eroticism between Women in Caribbean Literature. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.
• Tinsley, Omise’eke Natasha. Ezili’s Mirrors: Imagining Black Queer Genders. Durham: Duke University Press, 2018.

Documentaries, Films, & TV Shows

• POSE (2018; new season premiered June 11th)
• The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson (2017)
• Moonlight (2016)
• Kiki (2016)
• Bessie (2015)
• NO! (2004)
• The Watermelon Woman (1996)
• A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde (1995)
• Black Is, Black Ain’t (1995)
• Paris is Burning (1990)
• Tongues Untied (1989)