E. Patrick Johnson - "Honeypot" - Alexis Pauline Gumbs

E. Patrick Johnson discusses Honeypot: Black Southern Women Who Love Women. He will be joined in conversation by Alexis Pauline Gumbs. A Q&A and signing will follow the discussion.

Presented in partnership with Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture (CSRPC) and the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality (CSGS) at the University of Chicago 

At the Co-op

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About the book: E. Patrick Johnson's Honeypot opens with the fictional trickster character Miss B. barging into the home of Dr. EPJ, informing him that he has been chosen to collect and share the stories of her people. With little explanation, she whisks the reluctant Dr. EPJ away to the women-only world of Hymen, where she serves as his tour guide as he bears witness to the real-life stories of queer black women throughout the American South. The women he meets come from all walks of life and recount their experiences on topics ranging from coming out and falling in love to mother/daughter relationships, religion, and political activism. As Dr. EPJ hears these stories, he must grapple with his privilege as a man and as an academic, and in the process he gains insights into patriarchy, class, sex, gender, and the challenges these women face. Combining oral history with magical realism and poetry, Honeypot is an engaging and moving book that reveals the complexity of identity while offering a creative method for scholarship to represent the lives of other people in a rich and dynamic way.

About the author: E. Patrick Johnson is Carlos Montezuma Professor of Performance Studies and African American Studies at Northwestern University. A scholar/artist, Johnson performs nationally and internationally and has published widely in the areas of race, gender, sexuality and performance. Johnson is a prolific performer and scholar, and an inspiring teacher, whose research and artistry has greatly impacted African American studies, Performance studies, and Gender and Sexuality studies. He is the author of Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity (Duke UP, 2003), Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South—An Oral History (University of North Carolina UP, 2008), Black. Queer. Southern. Women.—An Oral History, (University of North Carolina Press, 2018) and Honeypot: Black Southern Women Who Love Women (Duke UP, 2019). He has edited and co-edited several volumes including (with Mae G. Henderson) Black Queer Studies—A Critical Anthology (Duke UP, 2005) and No Tea, No Shade: New Writings in Black Queer Studies (Duke UP, 2016), and (with Ramon Rivera-Servera) solo/black/woman (Northwestern UP, 2014) and Blacktino Queer Performance (Duke UP, 2016).

About the interlocutor: Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a queer black troublemaker, a black feminist love evangelist and a prayer poet priestess. She has a PhD in English, African and African-American Studies, and Women and Gender Studies from Duke University. She is the author of Spill: Fugitive Scenes (Duke UP 2016), M Archive: After the End of the World (Duke UP, 2018) and Dub: Finding Ceremony (Duke UP, 2020) the co-editor of Revolutionary Mothering: Love on Front Lines (PM Press, 2016).