Whether engaged in same-sex desire or gender nonconformity, black queer individuals live with being perceived as a threat while simultaneously being subjected to the threat of physical, psychological, and socioeconomical injury. Attending to and challenging threats has become a defining element in queer black artists' work throughout the black diaspora. GerShun Avilez analyzes the work of diasporic artists who, denied government protections, have used art to create spaces for justice. He first focuses on how the state seeks to inhibit the movement of black queer bodies through public spaces, whether on the street or across borders. From there, he pivots to institutional spaces—specifically prisons and hospitals—and the ways such places seek to expose queer bodies in order to control them. Throughout, he reveals how desire and art open routes to black queer freedom when policy, the law, racism, and homophobia threaten physical safety, civil rights, and social mobility.
GerShun Avilez is an associate professor of English at the University of Maryland. He is the author of Radical Aesthetics and Modern Black Nationalism.
AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Freedom in RestrictionPart One. Threatened Bodies in MotionChapter 1. Movement in Black: Queer Bodies and the Desire for Spatial JusticeChapter 2. Geographies of Mobility: Migratory Subjects and the Uncertainty of ItineracyPart Two. Bodies in Spaces of InjuryChapter 3. Uneven Vulnerability: Queer Hypervisibility and Spaces of ImprisonmentChapter 4. The Shadow of Institutions: Medical Diagnosis and the Elusive Queer BodyConclusion: Lives of Constraint, Paths to FreedomNotesIndex
A 2020 Seminary Co-op Notable Book— A 2020 Seminary Co-op Notable Book
