Acknowledgments  ix

Introduction  

"Blackness" and Authenticity: What's Performance Got to Do with It?  1

1. The Pot is Brewing: Marlon Riggs's Black Is . . . Black Ain't  17

2. Manifest Faggotry: Queering Masculinity in African American Culture  48

3. Mother Knows Best: Blackness and Transgressive Domestic Space  76

4. "Nevah Had uh Cross Word": Mammy and the Trope of Black Womanhood  104

5. Sounds of Blackness Down Under: The Cafe of the Gate of Salvation  160

6. Performance and/as Pedagogy: Performing Blackness in the Classroom  219

Appendix A Mary Rhyne's Narrative  257

Appendix B Interview with Mrs. Smith  311

Notes  315

Bibliography  345

Index  361

Finalist, 2004 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award

Winner, Errol Hill Book Award, American Society of Theatre Research

"Johnson adds some heretofore unheard of twists to the continuing saga of this most important black intellectual thought. . . . [A] welcome addition to the field."—Toni Lester, Lambda Book Report

"Johnson's first book . . . is an accomplished and original study that deftly traverses both the mythology of, and networks of power that remain embedded within, America's deep racial segregation. . . . [I]t is obvious that he seems destined to join Cornell West as a leading authority on race, not to mention performance studies and queer theory both in the United States and abroad."—James Tierney, M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture

"Appropriating Blackness marks a daring intervention in performance studies and African American studies. Its critical and ethical concerns will resonate for those working in numerous other fields, such as cultural anthropology; philosophy; critical ethnicity and race studies; gay, lesbian and queer studies; pedagogy studies; and music."—Antonio Viego, GLQ

"Appropriating Blackness offers an illuminating and compelling example of a critical politics of performing race. It decisively intervenes in disciplinary dialogues to rethink performance theory through the praxis of blackness, and to rethink black theory through performance. . . . Appropriating Blackness is one of the most significant studies to emerge in performance studies. It is a book we will need, a book we will use, and a book that marks our best disciplinary work."—Kristin M. Langellier, Text and Performance Quarterly

"Appropriating Blackness is compelling . . . because of the range, rigor, and cogent insight it provides relative to studies of black performance. . . . I commend this book, especially, to scholars of cultural politics, performance, race, queer studies, and those that take up these issues in critical media studies."—Robert Avery, Liminalities

Finalist, 2004 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award

Winner, Errol Hill Book Award, American Society of Theatre Research

"Johnson adds some heretofore unheard of twists to the continuing saga of this most important black intellectual thought. . . . [A] welcome addition to the field."—Toni Lester, Lambda Book Report

"Johnson's first book . . . is an accomplished and original study that deftly traverses both the mythology of, and networks of power that remain embedded within, America's deep racial segregation. . . . [I]t is obvious that he seems destined to join Cornell West as a leading authority on race, not to mention performance studies and queer theory both in the United States and abroad."—James Tierney, M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture

"Appropriating Blackness marks a daring intervention in performance studies and African American studies. Its critical and ethical concerns will resonate for those working in numerous other fields, such as cultural anthropology; philosophy; critical ethnicity and race studies; gay, lesbian and queer studies; pedagogy studies; and music."—Antonio Viego, GLQ

"Appropriating Blackness offers an illuminating and compelling example of a critical politics of performing race. It decisively intervenes in disciplinary dialogues to rethink performance theory through the praxis of blackness, and to rethink black theory through performance. . . . Appropriating Blackness is one of the most significant studies to emerge in performance studies. It is a book we will need, a book we will use, and a book that marks our best disciplinary work."—Kristin M. Langellier, Text and Performance Quarterly

"Appropriating Blackness is compelling . . . because of the range, rigor, and cogent insight it provides relative to studies of black performance. . . . I commend this book, especially, to scholars of cultural politics, performance, race, queer studies, and those that take up these issues in critical media studies."—Robert Avery, Liminalities

"With Appropriating Blackness, E. Patrick Johnson has given us a book worthy of the breadth its title signals. It is written in an excellent and refreshingly clear prose style which sacrifices nothing in the way of complexity of the ideas being presented. Johnson makes his observations about the relatedness of performance and blackness more compelling with each successive case study."—Dwight A. McBride, coeditor of Black Like Us: A Century of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual African American Fiction

"Appropriating Blackness is a wonderful study that makes important and timely contributions across many fields. E. Patrick Johnson is a skilled reader of texts and offers useful introductions to complex theories of race, sexuality, and culture.”—David Román, author of Acts of Intervention: Performance, Gay Culture, and AIDS

Permission to Photocopy (coursepacks)

If you are requesting permission to photocopy material for classroom use, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at copyright.com;

If the Copyright Clearance Center cannot grant permission, you may request permission from our Copyrights & Permissions Manager (use Contact Information listed below).

Permission to Reprint

If you are requesting permission to reprint DUP material (journal or book selection) in another book or in any other format, contact our Copyrights & Permissions Manager (use Contact Information listed below).

Images/Art

Many images/art used in material copyrighted by Duke University Press are controlled, not by the Press, but by the owner of the image. Please check the credit line adjacent to the illustration, as well as the front and back matter of the book for a list of credits. You must obtain permission directly from the owner of the image. Occasionally, Duke University Press controls the rights to maps or other drawings. Please direct permission requests for these images to permissions@dukeupress.edu.
For book covers to accompany reviews, please contact the publicity department.

Subsidiary Rights/Foreign Translations

If you're interested in a Duke University Press book for subsidiary rights/translations, please contact permissions@dukeupress.edu. Include the book title/author, rights sought, and estimated print run.

Disability Requests

Instructions for requesting an electronic text on behalf of a student with disabilities are available here.

Rights & Permissions Contact Information

Email: permissions@dukeupress.edu

Email contact for coursepacks: asstpermissions@dukeupress.edu

Fax: 919-688-4574

Mail:
Duke University Press
Rights and Permissions
905 W. Main Street
Suite 18B
Durham, NC 27701

For all requests please include:

1. Author's name. If book has an editor that is different from the article author, include editor's name also.

2. Title of the journal article or book chapter and title of journal or title of book

3. Page numbers (if excerpting, provide specifics)

For coursepacks, please also note: The number of copies requested, the school and professor requesting

For reprints and subsidiary rights, please also note: Your volume title, publication date, publisher, print run, page count, rights sought