The Queer Limit of Black Memory

The Queer Limit of Black Memory: Black Lesbian Literature and Irresolution identifies a new archive of Black women's literature that has heretofore been on the margins of literary scholarship and African diaspora cultural criticism. It argues that Black lesbian texts celebrate the irresolute sexualities and genders of queer Black subjects and create spaces for grieving the loss of queer Black subjects that dominant African diaspora histories often forget. Matt Richardson has gathered an understudied collection of texts by LaShonda Barnett, S. Diane Adamz-Bogus, Dionne Brand, Sharon Bridgforth, Laurinda D. Brown, Jewelle Gomez, Jackie Kay, and Cherry Muhanji in order to relocate the queerness of Black diasporic vernacular traditions, including drag or gender performance, blues, jazz, and West African spiritual and religious practices. The Queer Limit of Black Memory brings together several theorists whose work is vital within Black studies-Fred Moten, Saidiya Hartman, Hortense Spillers, Frantz Fanon, and Orlando Patterson-in service of queer readings of Black subjectivity.Matt Richardson is assistant professor of English and African and African Diaspora Studies and affiliate faculty with the Center for Women's and Gender Studies and the Warfield Center for African and African American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.