Kevin J. Mumford
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469626840
- eISBN:
- 9781469628073
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469626840.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
Into the 1980s, with the rise of black lesbian feminism, black gay activists too explored myriad lives at the intersection of social difference. Joseph Beam joined the thriving gay community in ...
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Into the 1980s, with the rise of black lesbian feminism, black gay activists too explored myriad lives at the intersection of social difference. Joseph Beam joined the thriving gay community in Philadelphia, worked at the gay bookstore, and enjoyed gay nightlife. Yet he also felt racially isolated, and endeavoured to create a new identity politics and alternative community.Less
Into the 1980s, with the rise of black lesbian feminism, black gay activists too explored myriad lives at the intersection of social difference. Joseph Beam joined the thriving gay community in Philadelphia, worked at the gay bookstore, and enjoyed gay nightlife. Yet he also felt racially isolated, and endeavoured to create a new identity politics and alternative community.
Darius Bost
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226589794
- eISBN:
- 9780226589961
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226589961.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gay and Lesbian Studies
This chapter explores diverse constructions of loneliness in the work of Essex Hemphill, especially in his elegies to his contemporary, black gay writer and activist, Joseph Beam. It theorizes ...
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This chapter explores diverse constructions of loneliness in the work of Essex Hemphill, especially in his elegies to his contemporary, black gay writer and activist, Joseph Beam. It theorizes loneliness as a traumatic structure of feeling and as an expression of black gay men’s collective political desires in the 1980s and 1990s. By positing loneliness in relation to black gay men's collective and political longings for richer subjective and social lives, the chapter reads Hemphill’s work as an alternative to recent anti-social and pessimistic strains of black and queer theory.Less
This chapter explores diverse constructions of loneliness in the work of Essex Hemphill, especially in his elegies to his contemporary, black gay writer and activist, Joseph Beam. It theorizes loneliness as a traumatic structure of feeling and as an expression of black gay men’s collective political desires in the 1980s and 1990s. By positing loneliness in relation to black gay men's collective and political longings for richer subjective and social lives, the chapter reads Hemphill’s work as an alternative to recent anti-social and pessimistic strains of black and queer theory.
Darius Bost
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226589794
- eISBN:
- 9780226589961
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226589961.003.0006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gay and Lesbian Studies
This epilogue revisits some of the book’s major arguments by analyzing a photograph taken by black gay activist Joseph Beam, alongside a poem that Other Countries co-founder Daniel Garrett wrote in ...
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This epilogue revisits some of the book’s major arguments by analyzing a photograph taken by black gay activist Joseph Beam, alongside a poem that Other Countries co-founder Daniel Garrett wrote in response to the photograph. It considers the ethical stakes of bearing witness to the 1980s and 1990s as a renaissance of black gay culture rather than focusing solely on the communal trauma and loss associated with the early era of the AIDS epidemic.Less
This epilogue revisits some of the book’s major arguments by analyzing a photograph taken by black gay activist Joseph Beam, alongside a poem that Other Countries co-founder Daniel Garrett wrote in response to the photograph. It considers the ethical stakes of bearing witness to the 1980s and 1990s as a renaissance of black gay culture rather than focusing solely on the communal trauma and loss associated with the early era of the AIDS epidemic.
