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“Wallace Thurman was a brilliant writer who did not have a chance to really make an impact in the way that his brilliance demanded…there’s not a lot of talk about the intersection of Blackness and queerness in the book, when he does talk about it, he makes it seem like this is how the Black homosexual has to live: in the shadows, in a closed room, in the closet, suppressing their desires, or even getting into relationships with people who they know they should not be in a relationship with because those are not where their desires are, but that’s where the society is pushing them to go. The Blacker the Berry is the earliest work that I found that even touches on Blackness and queerness. This is 1929, the same time that Zora Neale Hurston is writing and it’s just, ‘Wow! He had the courage to write about this at a time when it was utterly dangerous to do so.’ The courageousness of it is one of the things that makes me return to this book and think about the issues that it brings up.” Read more...
