The Poetics of Difference: Queer Feminist Forms in the African Diaspora
Winner of the Modern Language Association (MLA)’s William Sanders Scarborough Prize

From Audre Lorde, Ntozake Shange, and Bessie Head, to Zanele Muholi, Suzan-Lori Parks, and Missy Elliott, Black women writers and artists across the African Diaspora have developed nuanced and complex creative forms. Mecca Jamilah Sullivan ventures into the unexplored spaces of black women’s queer creative theorizing to learn its languages and read the textures of its forms. Moving beyond fixed notions, Sullivan points to a space of queer imagination where black women invent new languages, spaces, and genres to speak the many names of difference. Black women’s literary cultures have long theorized the complexities surrounding nation and class, the indeterminacy of gender and race, and the multiple meanings of sexuality. Yet their ideas and work remain obscure in the face of indifference from Western scholarship.

Innovative and timely, The Poetics of Difference illuminates understudied queer contours of black women’s writing.

1139031392
The Poetics of Difference: Queer Feminist Forms in the African Diaspora
Winner of the Modern Language Association (MLA)’s William Sanders Scarborough Prize

From Audre Lorde, Ntozake Shange, and Bessie Head, to Zanele Muholi, Suzan-Lori Parks, and Missy Elliott, Black women writers and artists across the African Diaspora have developed nuanced and complex creative forms. Mecca Jamilah Sullivan ventures into the unexplored spaces of black women’s queer creative theorizing to learn its languages and read the textures of its forms. Moving beyond fixed notions, Sullivan points to a space of queer imagination where black women invent new languages, spaces, and genres to speak the many names of difference. Black women’s literary cultures have long theorized the complexities surrounding nation and class, the indeterminacy of gender and race, and the multiple meanings of sexuality. Yet their ideas and work remain obscure in the face of indifference from Western scholarship.

Innovative and timely, The Poetics of Difference illuminates understudied queer contours of black women’s writing.

25.95 In Stock
The Poetics of Difference: Queer Feminist Forms in the African Diaspora

The Poetics of Difference: Queer Feminist Forms in the African Diaspora

by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan
The Poetics of Difference: Queer Feminist Forms in the African Diaspora

The Poetics of Difference: Queer Feminist Forms in the African Diaspora

by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan

Paperback(First Edition)

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Overview

Winner of the Modern Language Association (MLA)’s William Sanders Scarborough Prize

From Audre Lorde, Ntozake Shange, and Bessie Head, to Zanele Muholi, Suzan-Lori Parks, and Missy Elliott, Black women writers and artists across the African Diaspora have developed nuanced and complex creative forms. Mecca Jamilah Sullivan ventures into the unexplored spaces of black women’s queer creative theorizing to learn its languages and read the textures of its forms. Moving beyond fixed notions, Sullivan points to a space of queer imagination where black women invent new languages, spaces, and genres to speak the many names of difference. Black women’s literary cultures have long theorized the complexities surrounding nation and class, the indeterminacy of gender and race, and the multiple meanings of sexuality. Yet their ideas and work remain obscure in the face of indifference from Western scholarship.

Innovative and timely, The Poetics of Difference illuminates understudied queer contours of black women’s writing.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780252086038
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Publication date: 10/12/2021
Series: New Black Studies Series
Edition description: First Edition
Pages: 288
Product dimensions: 6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Mecca Jamilah Sullivan is an assistant professor of English at Bryn Mawr and the author of Blue Talk and Love.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction. Black Queer Feminist Poetics: Rereading the Intersection 1

Chapter 1 Biomythic Times: Voice, Genre, and the Invention of Black/Queer History 31

Chapter 2 "walkin on the edges of the galaxy": Queer Choreopoetic Thought in the African Diaspora 72

Chapter 3 Feeling Colors and Seeing Speech: Body/Language and Black Women's Diasporas of Difference 107

Chapter 4 "Languages of Love," "Talk" of Sex: Interstitial Idioms of Body and Desire 158

Coda. Speech between Silence: Distance, Difference, and the Queer Poetics of Blackwoman Living 193

Notes 199

Works Cited 217

Index 237

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