SUNY series in Black Women's Wellness

Voices of a Black Queer Lesbian South

Jayme N. Canty

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2024
• ISBN:
  9781438498928
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Description and List of Interlocutor Pseudonyms
• Preface: “Oh Yeah, You Southern”: Reflections from a Southern Black Queer Lesbian Woman
• Introduction: “It Is a Part of Southern Life”: Snapping Beans with SBQLWP Uncovers a Racialized Sexual Queer Geography
• “I Was Silent, But My Brain Was Loud”: The Silent South
• “The Church Is Not the Building; It’s the People”: The Shameful and Condemning South
• “The World Is Set Up for Straight Folks”: The Judgmental South and the Southern Black Personality
• “I Am Standing in My Truth”: The Authentic and Reconciled South
• The Black Queer Lesbian South
• Epilogue: We Continue to Carry On
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index
• Back Cover