Black. Queer. Southern. Women.: An Oral History

by E. Patrick Johnson

Drawn from the life narratives of more than seventy African American queer women who were born, raised, and continue to reside in the American South, this book powerfully reveals the way these women experience and express racial, sexual, gender, and class identities--all linked by a place where such identities have generally placed them on the margins of society. Using methods of oral history and performance ethnography, E. Patrick Johnson's work vividly enriches the historical record of racialized sexual minorities in the South and brings to light the realities of the region's thriving black lesbian communities.

At once transcendent and grounded in place and time, these narratives raise important questions about queer identity formation, community building, and power relations as they are negotiated within the context of southern history. Johnson uses individual stories to reveal the embedded political and cultural ideologies of the self but also of the listener and society as a whole. These breathtakingly rich life histories show afresh how black female sexuality is and always has been an integral part of the patchwork quilt that is southern culture.

Genres: Nonfiction, LGBT, History, Feminism, Queer, Race, Anti Racist

592 pages, Paperback

First published November 12, 2018

About the author

E. Patrick Johnson (Ph.D.) is an African-American performance artist, ethnographer, and scholar.

Reviews

[Marcia · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exceptional, expansive presentation of and by Black Queer Southern Women gifted to us by the oral historian, performance artist, and educator Dr. E. Patrick Johnson. His inventiveness shines through the interviews with a wide range of BQSW all of whose stories are potent, inspiring, sometimes upsetting, but most of all illuminating. This book - a big one in so many ways - is a crucial addition to the still-small universe of queer oral histories.

[Gabriella · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a behemoth of a book, and by the end I think it got repetitive. I think the editor could have been more diligent in his clarifications of some stream of consciousness passages, and allowed other characters more room for less choppy reflections.

But, there are definitely some insightful components and interesting stories.

Content warnings a few lines down
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Graphic descriptions of sexual assault, child abuse, and rape

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is not a book to speed through -- this is a book to take one page at a time, to honor and recognize the stories and the Black women and nonbinary queer people who tell them. educational and moving, and structured in an engaging way -- I'd like to read more of the author's oral history collections.

[Stacy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I became interested in the author's work after hearing him speak at the Decatur Book Festival in 2019. Some of these stories are rambling and repetitive, as they are told in people's own words, but others are very compelling.