Appropriating Blackness Performance and the Politics of Authenticity

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