In the Life and in the Spirit: Homoerotic Spirituality in African American Literature

In the Life and in the Spirit: Homoerotic Spirituality in African American Literature
ISBN-10
1438454074
ISBN-13
9781438454078
Category
Literary Criticism
Pages
227
Language
English
Published
2014-11-07
Publisher
SUNY Press
Author
Marlon Rachquel Moore

Description

Examines a range of fiction that challenges widespread assumptions about what it means to be a black person of faith. Taking up the perceived tensions between the LGBTQ community and religious African Americans, Marlon Rachquel Moore examines how strategies of antihomophobic resistance dovetail into broader literary and cultural concerns. In the Life and in the Spirit shows how creative writers integrate expressions of faith or the supernatural with sensuality, desire, and pleasure in a way that highlights a spectrum of black sexualities and gender expressions. Through these fusions, African American writers enact queer spiritualities that situate the well-known work of James Baldwin into a broader community of artists, including Bruce Nugent, Ann Allen Shockley, Alice Walker, Langston Hughes, Jewelle Gomez, Becky Birtha, and Octavia Butler. In these texts from 1963 to 1999, Moore identifies a pervasive, affirming stance toward LGBTQ people and culture in African American literary production.

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