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E. Patrick Johnson is the author of Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South (U. of North Carolina, 570 pp., $35 hb, less 10% in the store).

Traveling to every Southern state, author E. Patrick Johnson conducted interviews with more than seventy black gay men between the ages of 19 and 93.

He challenges stereotypes of the South as "backward" or "repressive," suggesting that these men draw upon the performance of "Southernness"--politeness, coded speech, and religiosity, for example--to legitimate themselves as members of both Southern and black cultures. At the same time, Johnson argues, they deploy those same codes to establish and build friendship networks and to find sexual partners and life partners.

Ultimately, Sweet Tea validates the lives of these black gay men and reinforces the role of storytelling in both African American and Southern cultures.

Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South
by Johnson, E. Patrick
Format:  Hardcover (Cloth)
Price:  $35.00
Published: University of North Carolina Press, 2008
Inventory Status: Usually Ships in 1-5 days

  See all editions of this title.

Giving voice to a population rarely acknowledged in writings about the South, "Sweet Tea" collects life stories from black gay men who were born, raised, and continue to live in the southern United States. E. Patrick Johnson challenges stereotypes of the South as "backward" or "repressive," suggesting that these men draw upon the performance of "southernness"--politeness, coded speech, and religiosity, for example--to legitimate themselves as members of both southern and black cultures. At the same time, Johnson argues, they deploy those same codes to establish and build friendship networks and to find sexual partners and life partners.

Traveling to every southern state, Johnson conducted interviews with more than seventy black gay men between the ages of 19 and 93. The voices collected here dispute the idea that gay subcultures flourish primarily in northern, secular, urban areas. In addition to filling a gap in the sexual history of the South, "Sweet Tea" offers a window into the ways that black gay men negotiate their sexual and racial identities with their southern cultural and religious identities. The narratives also reveal how they build and maintain community in many spaces and activities, some of which may appear to be antigay. Ultimately, "Sweet Tea" validates the lives of these black gay men and reinforces the role of storytelling in both African American and southern cultures.

Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology
by Johnson, E. Patrick, Henderson, Mae G.
Format:  Trade Paperback
Price:  $26.95
Published: Duke University Press, 2005
Inventory Status: Usually Ships in 1-5 days

  See all editions of this title.

While over the past decade a number of scholars have done significant work on questions of black lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered identities, this volume is the first to collect this groundbreaking work and make black queer studies visible as a developing field of study in the United States. Bringing together essays by established and emergent scholars, this collection assesses the strengths and weaknesses of prior work on race and sexuality and highlights the theoretical and political issues at stake in the nascent field of black queer studies. Including work by scholars based in English, film studies, black studies, sociology, history, political science, legal studies, cultural studies, and performance studies, the volume showcases the broadly interdisciplinary nature of the black queer studies project.

The contributors consider representations of the black queer body, black queer literature, the pedagogical implications of black queer studies, and the ways that gender and sexuality have been glossed over in black studies and race and class marginalized in queer studies. Whether exploring the closet as a racially loaded metaphor, arguing for the inclusion of diaspora studies in black queer studies, considering how the black lesbian voice that was so expressive in the 1970s and 1980s is all but inaudible today, or investigating how the social sciences have solidified racial and sexual exclusionary practices, these insightful essays signal an important and necessary expansion of queer studies.

Contributors. Bryant K. Alexander, Devon Carbado, Faedra Chatard Carpenter, Keith Clark, Cathy Cohen, Roderick A. Ferguson, Jewelle Gomez, Phillip Brian Harper, Mae G. Henderson, Sharon P. Holland, E. Patrick Johnson, Kara Keeling, Dwight A. McBride, Charles I. Nero, Marlon B. Ross, Rinaldo Walcott, Maurice O. Wallace