Skip to main content
University of Michigan Press
Fulcrum logo

You can access this title through a library that has purchased it. More information about purchasing is available at our website.

Share the story of what Open Access means to you

a graphic of a lock that is open, the universal logo for open access

University of Michigan needs your feedback to better understand how readers are using openly available ebooks. You can help by taking a short, privacy-friendly survey.

  1. Home
  2. James Baldwin and the Queer Imagination

James Baldwin and the Queer Imagination

Matt Brim 2014
Restricted You do not have access to this book. How to get access.
The central figure in black gay literary history, James Baldwin has become a familiar touchstone for queer scholarship in the academy. Matt Brim's James Baldwin and the Queer Imagination draws on the contributions of queer theory and black queer studies to critically engage with and complicate the project of queering Baldwin and his work. Brim argues that Baldwin animates and, in contrast, disrupts both the black gay literary tradition and the queer theoretical enterprise that have claimed him. More paradoxically, even as Baldwin's fiction brilliantly succeeds in imagining queer intersections of race and sexuality, it simultaneously exhibits striking queer failures, whether exploiting gay love or erasing black lesbian desire. Brim thus argues that Baldwin's work is deeply marked by ruptures of the "unqueer" into transcendent queer thought—and that readers must sustain rather than override this paradoxical dynamic within acts of queer imagination.
Read Book Buy Book
ISBN(s)
  • 978-0-472-05234-9 (paper)
  • 978-0-472-12059-8 (ebook)
  • 978-0-472-07234-7 (hardcover)
Subject
  • Literary Studies:American Literature
  • Sexuality Studies
Citable Link
  • Table of Contents

  • Stats

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • Dedication
  • Acknowledgments
  • Contents
  • INTRODUCTION. James Baldwin Theory—Seeing the Invisible
  • CHAPTER 1. James Baldwin’s Queer Utility: Black Gay Male Literary Tradition and Go Tell It on the Mountain
  • CHAPTER 2. Paradoxical Reading Practices: Giovanni’s Room as Queer/Gay/Trans Novel
  • CHAPTER 3. What Straight Men Need: Gay Love in Another Country
  • CHAPTER 4. Papas’ Baby: Impossible Paternity in Going to Meet the Man
  • CONCLUSION. The Queer Imagination and the Gay Male Conundrum
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Index
263 views since November 16, 2018
University of Michigan Press logo

University of Michigan Press

Powered by Fulcrum logo

  • About
  • Blog
  • Feedback
  • Contact
  • Contribute
  • Accessibility
  • Preservation
  • Privacy
  • Terms of Service
  • Log In
© University of Michigan Press 2020
x This site requires cookies to function correctly.