„A tornado flew around my room before you came” – black queer studies and querring black masculine
Starting off with Frank Ocean’s coming out story, author shows the limits of identity politics discourse. Referring to Siobhan B. Somerville’s theories, he discusses complicated intersections between race and sexuality and offers a brief history of their meaning.
Grounding his argument in the methodology gathered under the umbrella term of „black queer studies”, Stępniak presents E. Patrick Johnson’s theory about appropriating blackness. Uncovering heteronormative ideology standing behind the production of the „authentic blackness” discourse, he goes on to criticize the notions of patriarchal black masculinity. To illustrate his point, instead of reading „against the grain” of some straight cultural representations of black men, Stępniak offers an insight into two performance pieces by Afro-American homosexual theatre group, Pomo Afro Homos, and tries to show the process of performing black gay masculinity. He avoids essentialist stances though by insisting on the performative nature of the group’s work.

„A tornado flew around my room before you came” – black queer studies and querring black masculine
Starting off with Frank Ocean’s coming out story, author shows the limits of identity politics discourse. Referring to Siobhan B. Somerville’s theories, he discusses complicated intersections between race and sexuality and offers a brief history of their meaning.
Grounding his argument in the methodology gathered under the umbrella term of „black queer studies”, Stępniak presents E. Patrick Johnson’s theory about appropriating blackness. Uncovering heteronormative ideology standing behind the production of the „authentic blackness” discourse, he goes on to criticize the notions of patriarchal black masculinity. To illustrate his point, instead of reading „against the grain” of some straight cultural representations of black men, Stępniak offers an insight into two performance pieces by Afro-American homosexual theatre group, Pomo Afro Homos, and tries to show the process of performing black gay masculinity. He avoids essentialist stances though by insisting on the performative nature of the group’s work.