Acknowledgments vii

Foreword: "Home" Is a Four-Letter Word / Sharon P. Holland ix

Introduction: Queering Black Studies/ "Quaring" Queer Studies / E. Patrick Johnson and Mae G. Henderson 1

I. DISCIPLINARY TENSIONS: BLACK STUDIES/QUEER STUDIES

Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics? / Cathy J. Cohen 21

Race-ing Homonormativity: Citizenship, Sociology, and Gay Identity / Roderick A. Ferguson 52

Straight Black Studies: On African American Studies, James Baldwin, and Black Queer Studies / Dwight A. McBride 68

Outside in Black Studies: Reading from a Queer Place in the Diaspora / Rinaldo Walcott 90

The Evidence of Felt Intuition: Minority Evidence, Everyday Life, and Critical Speculative Knowledge / Phillip Brian Harper 106

"Quare" Studies, or (Almost) Everything I Know about Queer Studies I Learned from My Grandmother / E. Patrick Johnson 124

II. REPRESENTING THE "RACE": BLACKNESS, QUEERS, AND THE POLITICS OF VISIBILITY

Beyond the Closet as Raceless Paradigm / Marlon B. Ross 161

Privilege / Devon W. Carbado 190

"Joining the Lesbians": Cinematic Regimes of Black Lesbian Visibility / Kara Keeling 213

Why Are Gay Ghettoes White? / Charles I. Nero 228

III. HOW TO TEACH THE UNSPEAKABLE: RACE, QUEER STUDIES, AND PEDAGOGY

Embracing the Teachable Moment: The Black Gay Body in the Classroom as Embodied Text / Bryant Keith Alexander 249

Are We Family? Pedagogy and the Race for Queerness / Keith Clark 266

On Being a Witness: Passion, Pedagogy, and the Legacy of James Baldwin / Maurice O. Wallace 276

IV. BLACK QUEER FICTION: WHO IS "READING" US?

But Some of Us Are Brave Lesbians: The Absence of Black Lesbian Fiction / Jewelle Gomez 289

James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room: Expatriation, "Racial Drag," and Homosexual Panic / Mae G. Henderson 298

Robert O'Hara's Insurrection: "Que(e)rying History" / Faedra Chatard Carpenter 323

Bibliography 349

Contributors 371

Index 375