In this critique of the fields of feminist theory, queer theory, and critical race theory, Sharon Holland describes how, despite decades of theoretical and political work focused on race, we are continually affected by everyday experiences of racism and attached to old patterns of racist thought.

Sexual desire, often understood as personal erotic preference, is frequently seen as neutral, natural, or inevitable. Countering these commonplace assumptions, Racial Erotics shows how sexual partnering within communities of gay men is deeply embedded within larger social structures that define whiteness as desirable and normative while othering men of color. In queer erotic economies this othering may take the form of sexual rejection or fetishization of men of color, but C. Winter Han argues that the real danger of sexual racism is that it creates a hierarchy of racial worth that extends outside of erotic encounters into the everyday lives of gay men of color. In this way, sexual racism perpetuates a larger project of racial erasing that equates gayness with whiteness to secure acceptance for gay white men at the expense of queers of color. With vivid examples from interviews, media representations, and online dating sites, Han highlights the creative means through which gay men of color, cordoned off in spaces both gay and straight, produce alternative frameworks to combat dominant narratives. Racial Erotics offers a new paradigm for understanding the connection of race and queer desire, demonstrating how race profoundly shapes sexual desires among men while racialized notions of desire construct beliefs about belonging.

Investigates race and racism in the U.S. exotic dance industry.

Get to know the sociopolitical context behind microaggressions Microaggressions are brief, everyday exchanges that send denigrating messages to certain individuals because of their group membership (e.g., race, gender, culture, religion, social class, sexual orientation, etc.). These daily, common manifestations of aggression leave many people feeling vulnerable, targeted, angry, and afraid. How has this become such a pervasive part of our social and political rhetoric, and what is the psychology behind it? In Microaggression Theory, the original research team that created the microaggressions taxonomy, Gina Torino, David Rivera, Christina Capodilupo, Kevin Nadal, and Derald Wing Sue, address these issues head-on in a fascinating work that explores the newest findings of microaggressions in their sociopolitical context. It delves into how the often invisible nature of this phenomenon prevents perpetrators from realizing and confronting their own complicity in creating psychological dilemmas for marginalized groups, and discusses how prejudice, privilege, safe spaces, and cultural appropriation have become themes in our contentious social and political discourse. Details the psychological effects of microaggressions in separate chapters covering clinical impact, trauma, related stress syndromes, and the effect on perpetrators Examines how microaggressions affect education, employment, health care, and the media Explores how social policies and practices can minimize the occurrence and impact of microaggressions in a range of environments Investigates how microaggressions relate to larger social movements If you come across the topic of microaggressions in your day-to-day life, you can keep the conversation going in a productive manner—with research to back it up!

'This book rewarded me with dark, dry chuckles on every page' Reni Eddo-Lodge 'Hilarious . . . This original approach to discussing race is funny, intellectual and timely' Independent 'The work of a true mastermind' Benjamin Zephaniah I learned early on that, for me as a black professional, to rise through the ranks and really attain power, I needed to adopt the most ruthless of mindsets possible: the mindset of the White Man who would tear your cheek from your face before he even considered turning his one first.

The Psychic Life of Racism in Gay Men’s Communities engages in the necessarily complex task of mapping out the operations of racialized desire as it circulates among gay men. In exploring such desire, the contributors to this collection consider the intersections of privilege and marginalization in the context of gay men’s lives, and in so doing, argue that as much as experiences of discrimination on the basis of sexuality are shared among many gay men, experiences of discrimination within gay communities are equally as common. Focusing specifically on racialization, the contributors offer insight as to how hierarchies, inequalities, and practices of exclusion serve to bolster the central position accorded to certain groups of gay men at the expense of other groups. Considering how racial desire operates within gay communities allows the contributors to connect contemporary struggles for inclusion and recognition with ongoing histories of marginalization and exclusion. The Psychic Life of Racism in Gay Men’s Communities is an important intervention that disputes the claim that gay communities are primarily organized around acceptance and homogeneity and instead demonstrates the considerable diversity and ongoing tensions that mark gay men’s relationships with one another.

Raising the Dead is a groundbreaking, interdisciplinary exploration of death’s relation to subjectivity in twentieth-century American literature and culture. Sharon Patricia Holland contends that black subjectivity in particular is connected intimately to death. For Holland, travelling through “the space of death” gives us, as cultural readers, a nuanced and appropriate metaphor for understanding what is at stake when bodies, discourses, and communities collide. Holland argues that the presence of blacks, Native Americans, women, queers, and other “minorities” in society is, like death, “almost unspeakable.” She gives voice to—or raises—the dead through her examination of works such as the movie Menace II Society, Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved, Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead, Randall Kenan’s A Visitation of Spirits, and the work of the all-white, male, feminist hip-hop band Consolidated. In challenging established methods of literary investigation by putting often-disparate voices in dialogue with each other, Holland forges connections among African-American literature and culture, queer and feminist theory. Raising the Dead will be of interest to students and scholars of American culture, African-American literature, literary theory, gender studies, queer theory, and cultural studies.