Research Catalog

Title

Evidence of being : the black gay cultural renaissance and the politics of violence / Darius Bost.

Author

Bost, Darius

Publication

Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2019.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

181 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

Evidence of Being opens on a grim scene: Washington DC's gay black community in the 1980s, ravaged by AIDS, the crack epidemic, and a series of unsolved murders, seemingly abandoned by the government and mainstream culture. Yet in this darkest of moments, a new vision of community and hope managed to emerge. Darius Bost's account of the media, poetry, and performance of this time and place reveals a stunning confluence of activism and the arts. In Washington and New York during the 1980s and '90s, gay black men banded together, using creative expression as a tool to challenge the widespread views that marked them as unworthy of grief. They created art that enriched and reimagined their lives in the face of pain and neglect, while at the same time forging a path toward bold new modes of existence. At once a corrective to the predominantly white male accounts of the AIDS crisis and an openhearted depiction of the possibilities of black gay life, Evidence of Being above all insists on the primacy of community over loneliness, and hope over despair.

Subjects

• SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / General
• Black author
• New York (State) > New York
• Hemphill, Essex
• American literature > African American authors
• Washington (D.C.)
• Dixon, Melvin, 1950-1992
• African American gay men > New York (State) > New York
• African American gay men > Washington (D.C.)

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Introduction: On black gay being -- The contradictions of grief: violence and value in Blacklight magazine -- Loneliness: black gay longing in the work of Essex Hemphill -- Postmortem politics: the other countries collective and black gay mourning -- The future is very uncertain black gay self-making in Melvin Dixon's diaries -- Epilogue: Afterimage.

Call Number

Sc E 19-746

ISBN

• 9780226589794
• 022658979X
• 9780226589824
• 022658982X
• 9780226589961 (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

• 2018017662
• 40028846912

OCLC

• 1028903800
• 1028903800

Author

Bost, Darius, author.

Title

Evidence of being : the black gay cultural renaissance and the politics of violence / Darius Bost.

Publisher

Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2019.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Subject

Black author.

Other Standard Identifier

40028846912

Research Call Number

Sc E 19-746

JFE 19-3545