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The Greatest Taboo: Homosexuality in Black Communities
The Greatest Taboo Homosexuality in Black Communities Author:Henry Louis Gates Jr. Does homosexuality remain the greatest taboo in black culture? Is homosexuality a European cultural imposition on Africans? Are you black first or queer? Delroy Constantine-Simms has compiled 28 powerful, provocative essays from academics and writers of all ethnic heritages, genders, and sexualities, including bell nooks, Eric Garber, Seth Clark... more »e Silberman, Gregory Conerly, and Dr. Gloria Wekker, to explore the often volatile relationship between black gay men and lesbians and others of their race. Inspired by what Simms sees as a lack of explicitly black homosexual perspective in academic literature, he set out to find those unique insights that would provide illumination into such areas as identity and sexuality, religion, cultural perspectives, African perspectives, black lesbian perspectives, black male homosexual perspectives, black literature and homosexuality, homophobia and black popular music, and mythologies surrounding black sexuality. The sweeping scope of The Greatest Taboo runs from 19th-century slave quarters to postapartheid South Africa, from RuPaul to the Wu Tang Clan, from 1920s Harlem to 1995's Million Man March on Washington, providing a clear-eyed societal, cultural, political, and historical view of both the transformation and continued repression of black lesbians and gay men. Academically rigorous yet intellectually accessible, The Greatest Taboo seeks to stimulate a lively discourse and foster greater understanding of this internationally important, vastly misunderstood, and fascinating topic.« less