This book analyzes representative works of African American fiction, film, and music in which interracial desire appears in the context of same sex desire. In close readings of these "texts," Stefanie K. Dunning explores the ways in which the interracial intersects with queerness, blackness, whiteness, class, and black national identity. She shows that representations of interracial desire do not follow the logic of racial exclusion. Instead they are metaphorical and anti-biological. Rather than diluting race, interracial desire makes race visible. By invoking the interracial, black gay and lesbian artists can remake our conception of blackness.
Author(s): Stefanie K. Dunning
Year: 2009
Language: English
Pages: 152
Contents......Page 8
Acknowledgments......Page 10
Introduction......Page 14
1 “Ironic Soil”: Recuperative Rhythms and Negotiated Nationalism......Page 34
2 “No Tender Mercy”: Same-Sex Desire,Interraciality, and the Black Nation......Page 54
3 (Not) Loving Her: A Locus of Contradictions......Page 72
4 “She’s a B*(u)tch”: Centering Blackness inThe Watermelon Woman......Page 95
Epilogue: Reading Robert Reid-Pharr......Page 117
Notes......Page 124
Index......Page 140