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Book ID: CBB606138522

Evidence of Being: The Black Gay Cultural Renaissance and the Politics of Violence (2018)

Bost, Darius (Author)

University of Chicago Press
Publication date: 2018
Language: English

ISBN: 9780226589824

Publication Date: 2018
Physical Details: 192

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Community organization Medicine and politics Medicine and art Drama, dance, and performing arts Political activists and activism Community life AIDS (disease); HIV / AIDS Black people 20th century, late New York City (New York, U.S.) Washington, D. C. (U.S.)

Evidence of Being opens on a grim scene: Washington DC’s gay black community in the 1980s, ravaged by AIDS, the crack epidemic, and a series of unsolved murders, seemingly abandoned by the government and mainstream culture. Yet in this darkest of moments, a new vision of community and hope managed to emerge. Darius Bost’s account of the media, poetry, and performance of this time and place reveals a stunning confluence of activism and the arts. In Washington and New York during the 1980s and ’90s, gay black men banded together, using creative expression as a tool to challenge the widespread views that marked them as unworthy of grief. They created art that enriched and reimagined their lives in the face of pain and neglect, while at the same time forging a path toward bold new modes of existence. At once a corrective to the predominantly white male accounts of the AIDS crisis and an openhearted depiction of the possibilities of black gay life, Evidence of Being above all insists on the primacy of community over loneliness, and hope over despair.

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Review Jallicia Jolly (2022) Review of "Evidence of Being: The Black Gay Cultural Renaissance and the Politics of Violence". American Quarterly (pp. 169-180). unapi

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