Dancing With A Stranger

Originally published: New York, NY: HarperOne, [2014]

From a renowned editor of The New York Times comes a moving memoir that recounts his life from its start. Beginning with his turbulent childhood as an African American coming of age in the 1950s and 1960s, Mel Watkins pens a poignant and powerful memoir of his life at all stages, including his relationship with his brother who was addicted to drugs and violence and his connection with his grandmother, who inspired him to reach for the sky. “Mel Watkins has written a lovely book—warm and smart—that is much more than a memoir. Ohio and its black population have never been better served.” — Toni Morrison

Click here to listen to Julia Ericksen's interview about Dance with Me on Philadelphia NPR's "Radio Times" Rumba music starts and a floor full of dancers alternate clinging to one another and turning away. Rumba is an erotic dance, and the mood is hot and heavy; the women bend and hyperextend their legs as they twist and turn around their partners. Amateur and professional ballroom dancers alike compete in a highly gendered display of intimacy, romance and sexual passion. In Dance With Me, Julia Ericksen, a competitive ballroom dancer herself, takes the reader onto the competition floor and into the lights and the glamour of a world of tanned bodies and glittering attire, exploring the allure of this hyper-competitive, difficult, and often expensive activity. In a vivid ethnography accompanied by beautiful photographs of all levels of dancers, from the world’s top competitors to social dancers, Ericksen examines the ways emotional labor is used to create intimacy between professional partners and between professionals and their students, illustrating how dancers purchase intimacy. She shows that, while at first glance, ballroom presents a highly gendered face with men leading and women following, dancing also transgresses gender.