Snapping Beans
Voices of a Black Queer Lesbian South
Explores the role of the South in Black queer lesbian experiences of hurting and healing.
Description
Snapping Beans offers a collective narrative of Southern queer lesbian women and gender-nonconforming persons. Throughout the text, the American South acts as both a region and a main character, one that can shame and condemn but also serve as a site of reconciliation. Blending autoethnography and oral histories, Jayme N. Canty explores how both geographic location and social spaces, such as the Church, intersect with categories such as race, gender, and sexuality to shape and mark identity. Just as the intergenerational practice of snapping beans provides an opportunity to slow down, Canty enables readers to make space and to hear a new Southern narrative. Filled with both hurt and healing, Snapping Beans chronicles a multivocal journey of coming out, ultimately revealing a South where Black queer lesbians not only live but also, more importantly, thrive.
Jayme N. Canty is iCubed affiliated faculty in the Intersections in the Lives of LGBTQIA+ persons core and Assistant Professor in the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Reviews
"This book shines a beautiful spotlight on Black queer women in the South, illuminating their lived realities through their own words. Canty shows us the nuance of their joys, pains, and healings, bringing us deeper into Black Women's Studies and Black Queer Studies." — Julia S. Jordan-Zachary, author of Erotic Testimonies: Black Women Daring to Be Wild and Free