The famous lady lovers : Black women and queer desire before Stonewall / Cookie Woolner.
| Author/creator |
Woolner, Cookie author. |
| Format | Book and Print |
| Publication Info | Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2023] |
| Description | 200 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm. |
| Subject(s) |
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| Series | Gender and American culture Gender & American culture. ^A228874 |
| Contents | List of illustrations -- Have we a new sex problem here? -- Women slain in queer love brawl: the violent emergence of lady lovers in the 1920s northern Black press -- The famous lady lovers in the early twentieth-century Black popular entertainment industry -- A freakish party -- Black lady lovers, vice, and space in the prohibition era urban north -- Intimate friends and bosom companions: middle-class Black lady lovers crafting queer kinship networks -- Conclusion -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index. |
| Abstract | "Black queer women have shaped American culture since long before the era of gay liberation. Decades prior to the Stonewall Uprising, in the 1920s and 1930s, Black 'lady lovers'-as women who loved women were then called-crafted a queer world. In the cabarets, rent parties, speakeasies, literary salons, and universities of the Jazz Age and Great Depression, communities of Black lady lovers grew, and queer flirtations flourished. Cookie Woolner here uncovers the intimate lives of performers, writers, and educators such as Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, Gladys Bentley, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, and Lucy Diggs Slowe, along with the many everyday women she encountered in the archives. Examining blues songs, Black newspapers, vice reports, memoirs, sexology case studies, and more, Woolner illuminates the unconventional lives Black lady lovers formed to suit their desires. In the urban North, as the Great Migration gave rise to increasingly racially mixed cities, Black lady lovers fashioned and participated in emerging sexual subcultures. During this time, Black queer women came to represent anxieties about the deterioration of the heteronormative family. Negotiating shifting notions of sexuality and respectability, Black lady lovers strategically established queer networks, built careers, created families, and were vital cultural contributors to the US interwar era"-- Provided by publisher. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Issued in other form | ebook version : 9781469675503 |
| LCCN | 2023014310 |
| ISBN | 9781469675473 hardcover ; alkaline paper |
| ISBN | 1469675471 hardcover ; alkaline paper |
| ISBN | 9781469675480 paperback |
| ISBN | 146967548X paperback |
| ISBN | electronic book |
| ISBN | electronic book |
Available Items
| Library | Location | Call Number | Status | Item Actions | |
| Joyner | General Stacks | HQ76.27 .A37 W66 2023 | ✔ Available | Place Hold |