The Bull Jean Stories

"Using traditional storytelling and nontraditional verse to chronicle the course of love returning in the lifetimes of one woman-loving-woman named bull-dog-jean, the bull-jean stories give cultural documentation and social commentary on African-American herstory and survival. Set in the rural South of the 1920s, the bull-jean stories herald the spirit of African-American people."--PUBLISHER.

In tracing black feminism in contemporary drama by black women playwrights, Lisa M. Anderson reviews the history of black feminism through analysis of plays by Pearl Cleage, Glenda Dickerson, Breena Clarke, Kia Corthron, Suzan-Lori Parks, Sharon Bridgforth, and Shirlene Holmes.Black Feminism in Contemporary Dramarepresents a cross section of women who have diverse writing and performance styles and generational differences that highlight the artistic and political breadth of black feminist theater. Anderson closely investigates each play's construction and the context of its production, including how the play critiques, shifts, or alters dominant culture stereotypes; how it positions goals of the "community"; and how it engages with the concept of art's function. She not only discusses what shapes the black feminism of these writers but also points out how the meaning of the term black feminism shifts among them.

bull-jean & dem/dey back collects two performance/novels centering Sharon Bridgforth's southern-Black-butch-sheroe, bull-jean. First published by RedBone Press in 1998, the Lambda Literary Award-winning the bull-jean stories chronicles the course of lovve returning in the Life-times of bull-dog-jean. Set in the rural 1920s south, the bull-jean stories is an act of griot-anthropology, remembering the ancestor we never knew but always knew we needed--the raucous, sweet-talking, heart-aching wo'mn-lovvn-wo'mn bull-dog-jean and the fierce and beautiful community that surrounds her. Twenty-two years later, bull-dog-jean returns in bull-jean/we wake. Grieving the loss of their elders, seeking healing, the Narrator calls forward bull-jean. Through a series of dreams, porch prayers, and visitations from cussing conjurers, Black Mermaids, children that fly, and shape-shifting ole folk, bull-jean and dem guide the Narrator towards a realization of the sustaining power of love, memory, community, ritual, and spiritual binding.

Whether creating Broadway musicals, experimental dramas, or outrageous comedies, the performers, directors, playwrights, designers, and producers profiled in this collection have contributed to the representation of LGBTQ lives and culture in a variety of theatrical venues, both within the queer community and across the US theatrical landscape. Moving from the era of the Stonewall Riots to today, notable scholars in the field bring a wide variety of queer theatre artists into conversation with each other, exploring connections and differences in race, gender, physical ability, national origin, class, generation, aesthetic modes, and political goals, creating a diverse and inclusive study of 50 years of queer theatre. For readers seeking an introduction to or a deeper understanding of LGBTQ theatre, this volume offers thought-provoking analyses of theatre-makers both celebrated and lesser-known, mainstream and subversive, canonical and new.

The politics of Broadway musicals matter a great deal more to U.S. American culture than they appear to mean, and they are especially important to mainstream politics surrounding sex, gender, and sexuality. Love Is Love Is Love looks to the Broadway musicals of the past decade for help understanding the current state of LGBTQ politics in the United States. Through analyses of Promises, Promises, Newsies, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, The Color Purple, and Frozen, this book attempts to move past the question of representational politics and asks us instead to think in more complex ways about LGBTQ identity, what LGBTQ politics are, and the politics of Broadway musicals themselves. Producing new, complex readings of all five of these musicals, author Aaron C. Thomas places each of them within the context of the LGBTQ politics of their day. Some of the issues the book treats are controversies of casting, the closetedness and openness of musical theatre, LGBTQ identities, adaptation from movies into musicals, and the special power of the musical form by examining how these shows differ from the books and movies on which they’re based. Love Is Love Is Love places contemporary LGBTQ political tensions and conversations in a new light, making this an essential companion for students and scholars of contemporary theatre, musical theatre, cultural studies, Queer studies, and gender studies.

'Another Country' expands the possibilities of queer studies beyond the city limits, investigating the lives of rural queers across the United States, from faeries in the Midwest to lesbian separatist communes on the coast of Northern California.

What are the meanings behind constructed lesbian identities? This unique collection brings together writing, photography, artwork, and poetry about lesbian butch and femme gender. Femme/Butch: New Considerations of the Way We Want to Go distinguishes itself by celebrating a wide span of intellectual engagement, from reflection to traditional academic work, including both disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches. In addition to more “serious” writing, lesbian comediennes offer their irreverent takes on femme/butch in this book. Their perspectives are almost never found in academic publications, but what Lea DeLaria, Vickie Shaw, Karen Williams, and other edgy comics have to say about femme/butch sexuality deserves to be heard. You’ll also find that Femme/Butch is essential for the global perspective it brings to lesbian gender. With chapters focused on lesbians in Chinese cultures and on the emerging lesbian community in Bulgaria, this book explores the role of femme/butch identification in cultures without recognizable lesbian institutions. Here are a few of the questions the contributors to Femme/Butch examine in this remarkable book: Can theory about femme/butch exist in the electric realm of sex and sexuality, or does theory necessarily neutralize sexuality? What role does popular culture play in helping us to theorize about lesbian gender? What are the relationships between history and femme/butch lesbian gender? Does lesbian identity development come in individual stages or is it more of a free-flowing process? How does social class relate to how we think about femme/butch race, ethnicity, and butch-femme? Femme/Butch is an ideal guide to understanding: the similarities between stone-butch and transgender identities—using Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues as a reference point the erotically resignified roles of Mommy, Daddy, girl, and boy in butch-femme femme/butch issues of power, trust, love, and loss the “female husbands” of the 18th century and their “wives” the meanings of cross-dressing for lesbians the variety of lesbian-queer genders—butch, femme, androgynous, and “other” and much more!

The first collection of its kind, The Oberon Book of Queer Monologues chronicles over one hundred years of queer and trans performance. Combining stage plays with spoken word and performance art, this anthology features over forty extracts from some of the most exciting stage works in the English-speaking world. It is an essential tool for artists seeking monologues for auditions or training; a comprehensive guide through the hidden histories of queer theatre; and a celebration of the LGBTQIA+ community. Curated by award-winning artist Scottee, it features work from artists including Neil Bartlett, Mae West, Emma Donoghue, Split Britches, Chris Goode and Travis Alabanza.