{"id":7568,"date":"2010-06-19T05:43:31","date_gmt":"2010-06-19T05:43:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=7568"},"modified":"2011-06-25T21:39:43","modified_gmt":"2011-06-25T21:39:43","slug":"women-loving-women-queering-black-urban-space-during-the-harlem-renaissance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=7568","title":{"rendered":"Women-Loving Women: Queering Black Urban Space during the Harlem Renaissance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Women-Loving Women: Queering Black Urban Space during the Harlem Renaissance<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Women’s Studies 197: Senior Seminar<\/a>
\n2010-06-07
\nProfessor Lilith Mahmud<\/a><\/p>\n

Samantha Tenorio<\/strong><\/p>\n

The experience of black \u201cwomen-loving-women\u201d during the Harlem Renaissance<\/a> is directly influenced by what Kimberl\u00e9 Crenshaw<\/a> terms intersectional identity, or their positioning in the social hierarchies of race, gender, class, and sexual orientation that are simultaneously intertwined. Considering contemporary terms like lesbian and bisexual, it is difficult to define the sexual identity of many famous black women of the early 20th century, such as Gertrude \u201cMa\u201d Rainey<\/a>, Bessie Smith<\/a>, and Bessie Jackson<\/a> to name a few. However, their work both on and off the stage contributes to the construction of identities during the Harlem Renaissance that transgress both racial and sexual conventions. Although these social identities emerged from a long history of slavery and sexual oppression, they nonetheless produced a seemingly free space for the expression of lesbian sensibilities in the black community during the Harlem Renaissance. At a time of racial segregation in America, but also of ideologies of uplift within the black community, social spaces existed in Harlem where sexual \u201cdeviance\u201d and race-mixing could be articulated and seen explicitly. Using song lyrics, literature, and scholarly work on social and cultural spaces of the time period between 1919 and 1939, this paper analyzes how certain forms and sites of cultural production, specifically the blues, the cabaret, and literature helped to construct these transgressive identities.<\/p>\n

…Relating Racial Movement to a Queer Politics<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Similarly, but not at all equivalent, racial passing implies a more fluid movement between the worlds of black and white. Both Irene and Clare partake in passing for their own gain, though doing so in differing degrees. Their movement between the worlds of black and white represent a fluidity that speaks to a queer reading of Passing<\/em> and can be read as representing sexual mobility insomuch as segregation was established in order to protect the purity of the white race. This protection is what makes Clare\u2018s passing<\/a>, and marriage to a white man, that much more compelling. Here her passing is in direct opposition to segregation and the fear of miscegenation<\/a>, which are based on the sexual reproduction of a pure white race. Thus, I understand Clare and her passing to be a symbol for the transgression of both racial and sexual boundaries. Her racial fluidity as well as her transgression both speak to a queer reading of Larsen\u2018s fiction…<\/p>\n

Though an act of agency, the movement employed by Larsen can also be read as relating to the theme of mobility and fluidity that is present within queer politics. The figure of the \u201ctragic mulatta<\/a>\u201d employed by [Nella] Larsen<\/a> in Quicksand<\/a><\/em> illustrates a point of mediation, or a movement between two worlds, one who is constantly taking part in criminal intimacies. Helga is eternally caught between two worlds, yet being a victim of the\u00a0\u201cone-drop rule<\/a>\u201d she is always marked as ultimately belonging to the black race. \u00a0Here, though she is of mixed-race, her character illustrates that the bi-racial character cannot exist, she must always be defined as ultimately belonging to one race, and when this individual\u2018s races include black, she is always labeled as such. This marks the limitations of the tragic mulatta\u2019s movement, but still speaks to a movement that is constantly a theme of queer politics.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the entire paper here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Women-Loving Women: Queering Black Urban Space during the Harlem Renaissance Women’s Studies 197: Senior Seminar 2010-06-07 Professor Lilith Mahmud Samantha Tenorio The experience of black \u201cwomen-loving-women\u201d during the Harlem Renaissance is directly influenced by what Kimberl\u00e9 Crenshaw terms intersectional identity, or their positioning in the social hierarchies of race, gender, class, and sexual orientation that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[666,459,125,1196,14,6462,20,25],"tags":[87,3151],"class_list":["post-7568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gaylesbian","category-history","category-identitydevelopment","category-literary-criticism","category-papers","category-passing-2","category-usa","category-women","tag-nella-larsen","tag-samantha-tenorio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7568\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}