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Explores the role of the South in Black queer lesbian experiences of hurting and healing.
Snapping Beans offers a collective narrative of Southern queer lesbian women and gender-nonconforming persons. Throughout the text, the American South acts as both a region and a main character, one that can shame and condemn but also serve as a site of reconciliation. Blending autoethnography and oral histories, Jayme N. Canty explores how both geographic location and social spaces, such as the Church, intersect with categories such as race, gender, and sexuality to shape and mark identity. Just as the intergenerational practice of snapping beans provides an opportunity to slow down, Canty enables readers to make space and to hear a new Southern narrative. Filled with both hurt and healing, Snapping Beans chronicles a multivocal journey of coming out, ultimately revealing a South where Black queer lesbians not only live but also, more importantly, thrive.
"This book shines a beautiful spotlight on Black queer women in the South, illuminating their lived realities through their own words. Canty shows us the nuance of their joys, pains, and healings, bringing us deeper into Black Women's Studies and Black Queer Studies." — Julia S. Jordan-Zachery, author of Erotic Testimonies: Black Women Daring to Be Wild and Free
Acknowledgments
Description and List of Interlocutor Pseudonyms
Preface: "Oh Yeah, You Southern": Reflections from a Southern Black Queer Lesbian Woman
Introduction: "It Is a Part of Southern Life": Snapping Beans with SBQLWP Uncovers a Racialized Sexual Queer Geography
"I Was Silent, But My Brain Was Loud": The Silent South
"The Church Is Not the Building; It's the People": The Shameful and Condemning South
"The World Is Set Up for Straight Folks": The Judgmental South and the Southern Black Personality
"I Am Standing in My Truth": The Authentic and Reconciled South
The Black Queer Lesbian South
Epilogue: We Continue to Carry On
Notes
Works Cited
Index