James Baldwin and the Queer Imagination - Tapa dura

"Theorists have debated for decades about issues such as sexual identity and orientation, desire, and what is gay, queer, or trans. Brim adds a brilliant, provocative perspective to these conversations. He shows that gay and queer are far more complicated than most people imagine... Highly recommended." ---CHOICE-- (03/01/2015) "[R]ich textures and surprising insights ... fill his book. The sensitivity and vision of Brim's readings concoct a complex 'queer imagination' across the chapters, creating what Brim calls 'a navigation system for liberatory thought and action.'" ---Theory & Event--Joel Alden Schlosser "Theory & Event " "In addition to being a lovely prose stylist, Brim is a dexterous and efficient guide through a variety of critical contexts and debates, making his book accessible to Baldwin fans only passingly familiar with queer theory, as well as to queer academics and students new to Baldwin's work." ---Lambda Literary Review--Sam Huber "Lambda Literary Review "

For many readers and scholars, James Baldwin occupies so central a place in black gay literary history that he has become a key representative for queer creative culture. James Baldwin and the Queer Imagination seeks to complicate this view by providing a sustained investigation of the queer implications of Baldwin's writing while addressing the problematic appropriation of Baldwin as the standard-bearer of queer literary history and African American writing. Author Matt Brim argues that Baldwin's queer imagination is highly complex and anything but obvious, that queerness emerges unevenly in Baldwin's fiction, in ways that can be as restrictive as they are revelatory, and that his work exemplifies what the author terms an "unqueer" undercurrent present in queer creative thought. In demonstrating Baldwin's ambiguity, Brim also provides a critique of queerness from within queer studies.