Excavating Black Queer Thought: A Pride Bibliography II

In honor of Pride Month 2020, I wanted to extend the list of texts from the bibliography offered last year, ranging from traditional academic texts to cultural productions 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 as 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 in which Black feminist and Black queer studies have created and propagated alternative epistemologies — ways of knowing and producing knowledge(s) — within institutions that often deem personal narratives and experiences insignificant and outside in the hostile world.

Furthermore, this list reflects my deep belief that we must refuse a liberatory framework that urges Black trans, non-binary, and queer folks to put their Blackness first by somehow disentangling their Blackness from their gender and sexual identities — to somehow prioritize their Blackness for the sake of Black “collective” liberation. The presumption that we can ALL get free by diminishing and thereby perpetuating the violences that Black trans, non-binary, and queer folks experience within their communities is absolutely false. It is urgent that we be diligent and intentional in resisting the obfuscation of homophobic and transphobic violences that remain possible if the proclamation of “Black Lives Matter” hinges on an impossible disentanglement. 

• Alexander, M. Jacqui. Pedagogies of Crossing: Meditations on Feminism, Sexual Politics, Memory, and the Sacred. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005.
• Allen, Jafari S. ¡Venceremos?: The Erotics of Black Self-Making in Cuba. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011.
• Allen, Jafari S. Black Queer Diaspora, special issue of Gay and Lesbian Quarterly. Durham: Duke University Press, 2012.
• 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.
• 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.
• Brand, Dionne. In Another Place, Not Here. New York: Grove Press, 1996.
• 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.
• Cohen, Cathy. The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.
• Crawley, Ashon T. Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility. New York: Fordham University Press, 2016.
• Crawley, Ashon T. The Lonely Letters. Durham: Duke University Press, 2020.
• Davis, Adrienne D. and the BSE Collective. Black Sexual Economies: Race and Sex in a Culture of Capital. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2019.
• Ellis, Nadia. Territories of the Soul: Queered Belonging in the Black Diaspora. Durham: Duke University Press, 2016.
• Ellison, Treva, Green, Kai M., Richardson, Matt, Snorton, C. Riley. The Issue of Blackness, special issue of Transgender Studies Quarterly. Durham: Duke University Press, 2017.
• 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.
• Gomez, Jewelle. The Gilda Stories. San Francisco: City Light Publishers, 2016 (reissue).
• Gumbs, Alexis Pauline. Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity. Durham: Duke University Press, 2016.
• Gumbs, Alexis Pauline. Dub: Finding Ceremony. Durham: Duke University Press, 2020.
• Hartman, Saidiya. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval. New York: W.W. & Norton Company, 2019.
• Hemphill, Essex. Ceremonies: Prose and Poetry. New York: Plume Publishing, 1992.
• Horton-Stallings, LaMonda. Funk the Erotic: Transaesthetics and Black Sexual Cultures. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2015.
• Johnson E. Patrick, No Tea, No Shade: New Writings in Black Queer Studies. Durham: Duke University Press, 2016.
• Johnson, E. Patrick. Queer. Southern. Women.: An Oral History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018.
• Johnson, George M. All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto. New York: Macmillan Press, 2020.
• Jordan, June. Some of Us Did Not Die: New and Selected Essays of June Jordan. New York: Basic/Civitas Books, 2002.
• Keeling, Kara. Queer Times, Black Futures. New York: New York University Press, 2019.
• Kenan, Randall. A Visitation of Spirits. New York: Grove Press, 1989.
• Lorde, Audre. Zami: A New Spelling of my Name. New York: Crossing Press, 1982.
• Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde with a Foreword by Cheryl Clarke. New York: Penguin Random House, 2007.
• Macharia, K’eguro. Frottage: Frictions of Intimacy Across the Black Diaspora. New York: New York University Press, 2019.
• McKinley, Catherine, Delaney, L. Joyce. Afrekete: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Writing. New York: Penguin Random House, 1995.
• Mock, Janet. Surpassing Certainty: What My Twenties Taught Me. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017.
• Moraga, Cherríe, Anzaldúa, Gloria. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. New York: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1983.
• Moore, Darnell. No Ashes in the Fire. New York: The Nation Institute, 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. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York: New York University Press, 2009.
• Nash, Jennifer. The Black Body in Ecstasy: Reading Race, Reading Pornography. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014.
• 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.
• Pritchard, Eric Darnell. Fashioning Lives: Black Queers and the Politics of Literacy. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2016.
• Richardson, Matt. The Queer Limit of Black Memory: Black Lesbian Literature and Irresolution. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2013.
• Scott, Darieck. Extravagant Abjection: Blackness, Power, and Sexuality in the African American Literary Imagination. New York: New York University Press, 2010.
• Sharpe, Christina. Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects. Durham: Duke University Press, 2009.
• Smith, Barbara. Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology. New York: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1983.
• Smith, Danez. Don’t Call Us Dead. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2017.
• 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.
• Thurman, Wallace. Fire!!: A Quarterly Devoted to the Younger Negro Artists. Elizabeth: Fire Press, 1926.
• Tinsley, Omise’eke Natasha. Thiefing Sugar: Eroticism between Women in Caribbean Literature. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.
• Walcott, Rinaldo. Queer Returns: Essays on Multiculturalism, Diaspora, and Black Studies. Toronto: Insomniac Press, 2016.
• Welbon, Yvonne, Juhasz, Alexandra. Sisters in the Life: History of Out African American Lesbian Media-Making. Durham: Duke University Press, 2018.

Documentaries, Films, & TV Shows

• POSE (2018, 2019)
• Pier Kids (2019)
• Happy Birthday, Marsha! (2018)
• Dirty Computer (2018)
• Moonlight (2017)
• Kiki (2017)
• Free Cece! (2016)
• Major! (2015)
• Naz & Maalik (2015)
• Bessie (2015)
• Black is Blue (2014)
• Pariah (2011)
• 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)
• Portrait of Jason (1969)