Black Gay Men Of The South.

Culled from interviews during travel across 15 southern states, North-western University performance studies chair E. Patrick Johnson's Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South (University of North Carolina Press) profiles 63 gay Black men ranging in ages from 19 to 93. The stories--like the men--are as diverse and complex as Johnson's memories of his mother's and aunts' metaphorized iced tea recipes. "Sweet tea" serves as a double entendre referring to both Black gay men and to gossip (as in "pouring tea" or "spilling the tea"). The term serves as both a literal and figurative backdrop for a series of powerful, touching life narratives.

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Johnson's introduction sets up the collection with affinity and respect for his participation in the process, and the dialogues function as a series of intricate exchanges from Black performance and storytelling traditions. As a result, Sweet Tea easily shatters many narrow perceptions around the intersections of class, sex, love, age, religion, family and gender expression in Southern communities, as well as the simple and complex reasons that the men profiled have chosen to remain in the South.

Deconstructing Northern urban and academic assumptions and mythology about Black gay men's navigation of Southern homophobia and racism is crucial to Johnson's effectiveness as a writer and scholar. Contextualized and approached as a sharing as opposed to a distant anthropology, the collection testifies that there are more stories to tell if we're willing to listen.

--Juba Kalamka