Black Gay Man
Essays
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- $25.99
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- $25.99
Publisher Description
At turns autobiographical, political, literary, erotic, and humorous, will spoil our preconceived notions of not only what it means to be black, gay and male but also what it means to be a contemporary intellectual. Both a celebration of black gay male identity as well as a powerful critique of the structures that allow for the production of that identity, introduces the eloquent new voice of Robert Reid-Pharr in cultural criticism.
At once erudite and readable, the range of topics and positions taken up in reflect the complexity of American life itself. Treating subjects as diverse as the Million Man March, interracial sex, anti-Semitism, turn of the century American intellectualism as well as literary and cultural figures ranging from Essex Hemphill and Audre Lorde to W.E.B. DuBois, Frantz Fanon and James Baldwin, is a bold and nuanced attempt to question prevailing ideas about community, desire, politics and culture. Moving beyond critique, Reid-Pharr also pronounces upon the promises of a new America. With the publication of , Robert Reid-Pharr is sure to take his place as one of this country's most exciting and challenging left intellectuals.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"If there is one thing that marks us as queer... it is undoubtedly our relationship to the body," writes Reid-Pharr in this startling and provocative collection of essays detailing his intellectual (and erotic) life as a black, gay man living in a racist, heterosexual, postmodern world. Covering a wide range of topics black anti-Semitism, the Million Man March, interracial sex, the black family, gay male identity and lesbianism Reid-Pharr presents a cogent analysis that combines the personal with the political, the intellectual with the emotional and the erotic. Several essays gracefully unite literary and social concerns as when he uses the works of Frantz Fanon, George Jackson's letters from prison and the poems of Phyllis Wheatley to explicate the political position of black women in the nuclear family. Meanwhile, Reid-Pharr can be equally insightful and poetic when describing the meanings of his own sexual adventures with white men. An associate professor of English at Johns Hopkins, he demonstrates his training in literature in lengthy discussions of such works as Piri Thomas's Down These Mean Streets, Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice, James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room and the posthumously published poetry of Gary Fisher. But the vitality and importance of this collection resides in Reid-Pharr's ability to move these works and their themes from the limited analysis of the academy into a broader realm of lived experience and social context that makes them, as well as Reid-Pharr's own thoughts, vital and genuinely consequential.
