"Out of This Confusion I Bring My Heart": Love, Liberation, and the Rise of Black Lesbian and Gay Cultural Politics in Late Twentieth Century America.

Abstract

This dissertation investigates themes of liberation and love in post-civil rights Black LGBT literary cultures. Tracing love as a political trope in African American literary history, I demonstrate how it operates as a central theme in black queer cultural production in the late twentieth century. I argue that black lesbian and gay artist-activists were not interested in enacting a myopic sexual agenda but rather expanding the very understanding of love as a political necessity for the achievement of liberation. Whereas most historians argue that by the late 1960s black liberation struggles were on a decline, my investigation of literatures by black lesbian and gay artists shows how black queer culture of the post-civil rights era continue black liberation struggles. While literary scholars and historians have explored the work of Black gay writers and thinkers like James Baldwin and Bayard Rustin, few have examined the larger context of post-civil rights black LGBT culture, and in particular the deep personal and literary connections between Black lesbian writers and an emergent generation of self identified black gay male writers. This dissertation analyzes the political and literary activism of black lesbian feminists Barbara Smith, Audre Lorde, Pat Parker, Cheryl Clarke, Joseph Beam, and Assotto Saint. While intervening in the politics of writing a black liberation narrative, this project also offers a new approach to the study of Afro-American literature and culture by placing black lesbian and gay cultural productions at the center of analysis.