Oxford University Women's Campaign

Day 32 of #BlackHistoryYouDidntLearnInSchool - Coretta Scott King

My twitter

Coretta Scott King quotes:

I must remind you that starving a child is violence. Neglecting school children is violence. Punishing a mother and her family is violence. Discrimination against a working man is violence. Ghetto housing is violence. Ignoring medical need is violence. Contempt for poverty is violence.

Earlier this year, author K Tempest Bradford challenged readers to try a year of books that aren’t written by straight, white, cis men. Some see challenges like this as limiting our reading choices - but in a culture where white, straight, cis narratives continue to dominate, intentionally diversifying the stories we read is an exercise in expansion.

As in the past two years, I put together this list of publications from 2014 with the help of resources like the Lambda Literary Foundation and Sistahs On The Shelf, as well as reviewers around tumblr, goodreads and elsewhere. It has grown thanks to the efforts of small presses like Kórima Press and biyuti publishing. These are all books that feature the voices of queer people of color and/or QPOC protagonists.

Annual disclaimer: There’s no way this list is exhaustive. These are also not personal recommendations, just every title I could find. If I was unsure about a book’s contents (that is, if I was unsure if the qpoc characters were prominent, or if I thought the book might be exploitative), I tried to give weight to who the author is (i.e. I was more likely to include books I know were written by people of color). Of course, I’ll happily add books to the list if you have any suggestions that fit the theme - only books about QPOC, and only works published in 2014. Here’s everything I found, arranged by genre: Fiction

Otros Valos by Jamie Berrout

The Rules by S. Renee Bess

Love Enough by Dionne Brand

Yabo by Alexis De Veaux

The Girl with the Treasure Chest by V.A. Fearon

For Today I am a Boy by Kim Fu

Souljah by John R. Gordon

Niya 2 by Fabiola Joseph

Rapture by Myesha D. Jenkins

Prairie Ostrich by Tamai Kobayashi

The Paths of Marriage by Mala Kuma

Part the Hawser Limn the Sea by Dan Lopez

Last Words of Montmartre by Qiu Miaojin

Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab by Shani Mootoo

The Walk-In Closet by Abdi Nazemian

A Lesbian in God’s House by Phenomenon

She of the Mountains by Vivek Sharya

Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror

Skin Deep Magic by Craig Laurence Gidney

The Beast of Callaire by Saruuh Kelsey

Love in the Gilded Age by Saruuh Kelsey

Sacred Fire by Tanai Walker

Desire at Dawn by Fiona Zedde

Romance

Desire: Gay Passionate Short Stories by Orville Lloyd Douglas

Let The Love Be by Sheree L. Greer

How Can An Angel Take My Heart, Part II: The Armanèe by Regina Knox

Pieces of Her by A.C. Mims

Les Tales: Tempted to Touch by Skyy, Nikki Rashan and Fiona Zedde

Surrender: Two Hearts & A Rainbow Series by Monique BT Thomas

Treasure by Rebekah Weatherspoon

Safe Haven by B.L. Wilson

When She Says Yes by Fiona Zedde

Poetry

Difficult Fruit by Lauren Alleyne

i just want freedom by b. binaohan

The New Testament by Jericho Brown

The Cha Cha Files: A Chapina Poética by Maya Chinchilla

Floating Brilliant Gone by Franny Choi

Make Love to Rage by Morgan Robyn Collado

Under My Skin by Orville Lloyd Douglas

Prime: Poetry & Conversation by Darrel Alejandro Holnes, Saeed Jones, Rickey Laurentiis, Phillip B. Williams and L. Lamar Wilson

The Possibilities of Mud by Joe Jiménez

Prelude to Bruise by Saeed Jones

Don’t Go Back To Sleep by Timothy Liu

Naming Ceremony by Chip Livingston

I Look For You In Other Truths by Ramon Loyola

Amorcito Maricón by Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano

Haiti Glass by Lenell Moise

This Way to the Sugar by Hieu Minh Nguyen

Everybody’s Bread by Claudia Rodriguez

Language Arts by Cedar Sigo

[insert] boy by danez smith

The Fateful Apple by Venus Thrash

Drama

Bird in the Hand by Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas

BOOTYCANDY by Robert O’Hara

A Boiz Life: A play in one act by E.J. Loveson

The Beast of Times by Adelina Anthony

Jotos del Barrio by Jesús Alonzo

Memoir/Bio

The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood by Richard Blanco

Fire Shut Up in my Bones by Charles M. Blow

Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay

Memoirs of a GayShe by Garland G. Guidry

A Cup of Water Under My Bed by Daisy Hernandez

The Transsexual from Tobago by Dominique Jackson

Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Round: Forty Years of Movement Building with Barbara Smith edited by Alethia Jones & Virginia Eubanks with Barbara Smith

Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More by Janet Mock

My Life is No Accident by Tenika Watson and Jennifer Daelyn 

Nonfiction/Queer Studies

Willful Subjects by Sara Ahmed

James Baldwin: The Last Interview and Other Conversations

Under Bright Lights: Gay Manila and the Global Scene by Bobby Benedicto

Gender on the Edge: Transgender, Gay, and Other Pacific Islanders edited by Niko Besnier & Kalissa Alexeyeff

decolonizing trans/gender 101 by b. binaohan

The Queer Caribbean Speaks Interviews with Writers, Artists, and Activists by Kofi Omoniyi Sylvanus Campbell

Firelight of a Different Colour: The Life and Times of Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing by Nigel Collett

Hold Tight Gently: Michael Callen, Essex Hemphill, and the Battlefield of AIDS by Martin Duberman

Underserved Women of Color, Voice, and Resistance Claiming a Seat at the Table edited by Sonja M. Brown Givens & Keisha Edwards Tassie

Black and Gay in the UK: An Anthology edited by John R. Gordon & Rikki Beadle-Blair

A View from the Bottom: Asian American Masculinity and Sexual Representation by Nguyen Tan Hoang

Black Queer Identity Matrix: Towards An Integrated Queer of Color Framework by Sheena C. Howard

Queer & Trans Artists of Color: Stories of Some of Our Lives by Nia King

Island Bodies: Transgressive Sexualities in the Caribbean Imagination by Rosamond S. King

Namibia’s Rainbow Project: Gay Rights in an African Nation by Robert Lorway

Queen for a Day: Transformistas, Beauty Queens, and the Performance of Femininity in Venezuela by Marcia Ochoa

Unbought and Unbossed: Transgressive Black Women, Sexuality, and Representation by Trimika Melancon

Queer Beirut by Sofian Merabet

In the Life and In the Spirit: Homoerotic Spirituality in African American Literature by Marlon Rachquel Moore

Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism by Amber Jamilla Musser

Imperial Blues: Geographies of Race and Sex in Jazz Age New York by Fiona I. B. Ngô

Sexual Futures, Queer Gestures, and Other Latina Longings by Juana María Rodríguez

The Avowal of Difference: Queer Latino American Narratives by Ben. Sifuentes-Jauregui

Black Gay Genius: Answering Joseph Beam’s Call edited by Charles Stephens & Steven G. Fullwood

Queer Masculinities in Latin American Cinema: Male Bodies and Narrative Representations by Gustavo Subero

The Queerness of Native American Literature by Lisa Tatonetti

Delectable Negro: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism within US Slave Culture by Vincent Woodard

Young Adult

The Voices in Between by Charlene Challenger

The Bane Chronicles by Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan & Maureen Johnson

The Sowing by Steven Dos Santos

Otherbound by Corinne Duyvis

Moon at Nine by Deborah Ellis

Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel by Sara Farizan

Climbing the Date Palm by Shira Glassman

Always Leaving by Gene Grant

Pukawiss the Outcast by Jay Jordan Hawke

Guardian by Alex London

Gabi, A Girl in Pieces by Isabel Quintero

Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

Children’s Lit

Tell Your Story, Tell A Dream Birthday Cake by Angela Bermudez & Flor Bermudez

Comics/Graphic Novels

Massive: Gay Erotic Manga and the Men Who Make It by Anne Ishii, Chip Kidd & Graham Kolbeins

100 Crushes by Elisha Lim

More and More of You by Takeshi Matsu

Cruising Diaries by Brontez Purnell & Janelle Hessig

Snackies by Nick Sumida

On Friday, a large group of teens gathered for a pool party in the city of McKinney, Texas. Shortly thereafter, someone called the police. And by Sunday night, as footage of the police response spread across the internet, the McKinney Police Department announced it was placing Eric Casebolt, the patrol supervisor shown in the video, on administrative leave.

It is the latest in a string of incidents of police using apparently excessive force against African Americans that has captured public attention. And it took place at a communal pool—where, for more than a century, conflicts over race and class have often surfaced.

The video shows a foul-mouthed police corporal telling the young men he encounters to get down, and the young women to take off, although far more obscenely. When several seated young men appear to ask, politely, for permission to leave, he explodes at them: “Don’t make me fucking run around here with thirty pounds of goddamn gear in the sun because you want to screw around out here.” The corporal was white. The young people he detained were, almost without exception, black.

The video next shows him repeatedly cursing at a group of young women, telling them to move on. Then he wrestles one to the ground. As bystanders react in horror, and several rush toward the young woman as if to her assistance, he draws his sidearm. They flee. He returns to the teenager, wrestles her back down, forces her face into the ground, and places both knees on her back.

The McKinney police said, in a statement, that they were called to respond to the Craig Ranch North Community Pool for a report of  “a disturbance involving multiple juveniles at the location, who do not live in the area or have permission to be there, refusing to leave.” They added that additional calls reported fighting, and that when the crowd refused to comply with the first responding officers, nine additional units were deployed.

The mayor, Brian Loughmiller, described himself as “disturbed and concerned,” and the police chief vowed “a complete, and thorough, investigation.”

Like many flourishing American suburbs, McKinney has struggled with questions of equity and diversity. The city is among the fastest-growing in America, and its residents hail from a wide range of backgrounds. Formal, legal segregation is a thing of the past. Yet stark divides persist.

In 2009, McKinney was forced to settle a lawsuit alleging that it was blocking the development of affordable housing suitable for tenants with Section 8 vouchers in the more affluent western portion of the city. East of Highway 75, according to the lawsuit, McKinney is 49 percent white; to its west, McKinney is 86 percent white. The plaintiffs alleged that the city and its housing authority were “willing to negotiate for and provide low-income housing units in east McKinney, but not west McKinney, which amounts to illegal racial steering.”

All three of the city’s public pools lie to the east of Highway 75. Craig Ranch, where the pool party took place, lies well to its west. BuzzFeed reports that the fight broke out when an adult woman told the teens to go back to “Section 8 housing.”

Craig Ranch North is the oldest residential portion of a 2,200 acre master-planned community. “The neighborhood is made up of single-family homes,” says the developer’s website, “and includes a community center with two pools, a park and a playground.” Private developments like Craig Ranch now routinely include pools, often paid for by dues to homeowners’ associations, and governed by their rules. But that, in itself, represents a remarkable shift.

At their inception, communal swimming pools were public, egalitarian spaces. Most early public pools in America aimed more for hygiene than relaxation, open on alternate days to men and women. In the North, at least, they served bathers without regard for race. But in the 1920s, as public swimming pools proliferated, they became sites of leisure and recreation. Alarmed at the sight of women and men of different races swimming together, public officials moved to impose rigid segregation.

As African Americans fought for desegregation in the 1950s, public pools became frequent battlefields. In Marshall, Texas, for example, in 1957, a young man backed by the NAACP sued to force the integration of a brand-new swimming pool. When the judge made it clear the city would lose, citizens voted 1,758-89 to have the city sell all of its recreational facilities rather than integrate them. The pool was sold to a local Lions’ Club, which was able to operate it as a whites-only private facility.

The decisions of other communities were rarely so transparent, but the trend was unmistakable. Before 1950, Americans went swimming as often as they went to the movies, but they did so in public pools. There were relatively few club pools, and private pools were markers of extraordinary wealth. Over the next half-century, though, the number of private in-ground pools increased from roughly 2,500 to more than four million. The declining cost of pool construction, improved technology, and suburbanization all played important roles. But then, so did desegregation. As historian Jeff Wiltse argues in his 2007 book, Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America:

Although many whites abandoned desegregated public pools, most did not stop swimming. Instead, they built private pools, both club and residential, and swam in them …. Suburbanites organized private club pools rather than fund public pools because club pools enabled them to control the class and racial composition of swimmers, whereas public pools did not. Today, that complicated legacy persists across the United States. The public pools of mid-century—with their sandy beaches, manicured lawns, and well-tended facilities—are vanishingly rare. Those sorts of amenities are now generally found behind closed gates, funded by club fees or homeowners’ dues, and not by tax dollars. And they are open to those who can afford to live in such subdivisions, but not to their neighbors just down the road.

Whatever took place in McKinney on Friday, it occurred against this backdrop of the privatization of once-public facilities, giving residents the expectation of control over who sunbathes or doggie-paddles alongside them. Even if some of the teens were residents, and others possessed valid guest passes, as some insisted they did, the presence of “multiple juveniles…who do not live in the area” clearly triggered alarm. Several adults at the pool reportedly placed calls to the police. And none of the adult residents shown in the video appeared to manifest concern that the police response had gone too far, nor that its violence was disproportionate to the alleged offense.

1. “The Man Monster” Mary Jones/Peter Sewally

On June 11, 1836, New York City stone mason Robert Haslem went looking for a little nocturnal fun. He found it on Bleecker Street in the form of a pretty black sex worker, who took him to an alley near her house at 108 Greene St., a known whorehouse, where they got down to business. Afterward they parted ways, only for Haslem to realize that his wallet was missing. He reported the theft to police, who wasted no time in going undercover to catch the thief and she was promptly arrested. The woman gave her name as Mary Jones, and it was revealed during a police strip search that she was assigned male at birth.

The local press of the era had a field day with the case. When it was revealed that Mary Jones, legal name Peter Sewally, had fashioned a makeshift vagina out of cow skin that they wore tied around their waist for clients, they were dubbed “Beefsteak Pete” and “The Man Monster”. Sewally reportedly used other aliases such as Miss Ophelia, Miss June, and Eliza Smith. They seemed surprised that anyone would be shocked by their dressing. “I have always attended parties among the people of my own color dressed in this way—and in New Orleans I always dressed in this way,”. During the trial, Sewally was severely ridiculed by the press who often refereed to them as “he” and “he or she”. Sewally appeared in court in elegant women’s clothing, and in one instance a spectator seated behind them snatched off their wig and waved it around causing laughter in the room. Sewally was found guilty of grand larceny and sentenced to five years in state prison, but reappeared in news accounts several times in the ensuing years, invariably for the same offense. On May 16, 1853, the New York Times reported that at 3 a.m. the previous morning, Sewally was arrested just days after being released from yet another five-year sentence at Sing Sing. Though Sewally described themselves in court as a man, terminology used to describe gender identity was non existent at the time making it unclear if Sewally was a trans woman, gender non conforming, or a gay man.

2. The White Feminist Betrayal of Sojourner Truth

Transmisogyny as defined by Julia Serano, is steeped in the assumption that femaleness and femininity are inferior to, and exist primarily for the benefit of maleness and masculinity. Transmisogyny primarily manifests itself through the oppression of trans women and gender non conforming male assigned at birth individuals. As a form of cultural and systemic oppression, transmisogyny intersects itself with other dominant forms of oppression such as colorism, racism, ableism, white supremacy, and classism. Transmisogyny upholds patriarchal standards of beauty and womanhood by creating rigid standards that define women’s bodies and identities. As an oppressive system it also targets specific groups of marginalized cis women who fail to live up to or uphold rigid standards of womanhood. The treatment of Sojourner Truth by white people serves as an example of anti-black transmisogyny or transmisogynoir against cis women. 

Sojourner Truth was a women’s rights activist and an abolitionist, well known for her speeches and public speaking skills. As a tall dark skinned and formerly enslaved Black woman, Sojourner’s intelligence often shocked white people into disbelief. When she spoke at a women’s convention in Massilon, Ohio, a white reporter once commented that her clothing “was neither male nor female, not yet a bloomer making it somewhat difficult to determine which of the sexes she belonged”. A more explosive incident occurred during a series of anti-slavery talks in northern Indiana in 1858. A rumor began to circulate among democrats and suffragettes that Sojourner was not a woman, but a man disguising himself in a dress. This rumor partially sprang up because Sojourner bared her muscular arm during her famous “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech at a women’s convention in 1851. The trope of a man in a dress trying to infiltrate a women’s movement has often been used to deny the existence of trans women. In this case it is used to discredit a Black woman for having masculine features and refusing to submit to the established gender roles. Dr. T.W. Strain spoke to the large mostly white crowd and suggested that Sojourner show her breasts to some women to dispel this rumor. 

Sojourner questioned why she was thought to be a man and was answered that “your voice is not that of a woman; it is the voice of a man”. Sojourner told them that her breasts had “suckled many a white babe, that some of those white babies had grown to man’s estate; that they were far more manly than they (her persecutors) appeared to be”. She quietly asked them, as she disrobed her bosom, if they, too, “wished to suck”. In vindication of her truthfulness, she showed her breasts to the whole congregation; it was not to her shame that she uncovered her breast before them, but to their shame.

3. The Rape of Frances Thompson, a Black Trans Woman 

The Memphis Riots of 1886 were a series of violent and racist attacks that occurred between May 1 through May 3 in Memphis, Tennessee. After a shooting incident between white police and Black union soldiers, mobs of white civilians and policemen terrorized Black neighborhoods by looting goods and inflicting violence. Still in the early days of reconstruction, white rioters ignited violence because of anger towards the existence of freedmen following the Civil War. Federal troops were sent to quell the violence and peace was restored on the third day. A subsequent report by a joint Congressional Committee detailed the carnage, with Blacks suffering most of the injuries and deaths: 46 Blacks and 2 whites were killed, 75 Blacks injured, over 100 Black persons robbed, 5 Black women raped, and 91 homes, 4 churches and 8 schools burned in the Black community. Sexual violence played a specific role in targeted white male violence against Black women.

Frances Thompson, then 26, was one of five freedwomen who reported being subject to sexual violence during the riots. On May 1, 1886, seven irishmen including two police officers broke into the home she shared with 16 year old Lucy Smith. Frances, disabled from cancer in her foot, tried to help Lucy flee out of a window but both were caught. Angered by their union affiliation, the white assailants severely beat and raped both of them then robbed them of 300 dollars. During their attack the men said “ you niggers have a mighty liking for the damned yankees, but we will kill you and you will have no liking for anyone then”. As a result of her injuries Frances Thompson was bed rested for 3 days while Lucy Smith spent several weeks recovering from near death and was unable to speak for 12 days. 

Frances Thompson, Lucy Smith, Rebecca Ann Bloom, and Harriet Armor all fought back by speaking out to the Select House Committee on the Memphis Riots. Two months after the riots, The Avalanche, a sensationalist newspaper in Memphis referred to Frances as an “old hag” and “strumpet” while claiming it was “absurd” that she was raped. Ten years after the Memphis Riots, Frances Thompson was arrested for cross dressing as a man in women’s clothing. In 1876, the Memphis Public Ledger broke the story that Frances was assigned male at birth and also claimed that she ran a brothel for a living. Reminding their regular readers of her testimony before the Select Committee, the newspaper claimed that the discovery of her sex assignment which was confirmed by four doctors was proof that her rape was a lie. The paper used this story for more than a week, touting it as proof that the Select Committee was a fraud and based on lies. Frances Thompson’s cross dressing arrest along with previous charges of solicitation with Lucy Smith, was used by conservatives in their effort to discredit all five Black rape victims and reconstruction in general.

Sources 

- Peter Sewally - Mary Jones, June 11, 1836 (x)

- City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790-1920Mar 17, 1994by Timothy J. Gilfoyle (x)

-  Sojourner Truth: Slave, Prophet, Legend By Carleton Mabee, Susan Mabee Newhouse (x) page 188-189

- Sojourner Truth: The Libyan Sibyl (x)

- Terror in the Heart of Freedom: Citizenship, Sexual Violence, and the Meaning of Race in the Postemancipation South by Hannah Rosen (x) page 295

- Women’s America: Refocusing the Past By Linda K. Kerber, Jane Sherron De Hart, Cornelia Hughes Dayton, Judy Tzu-Chun Wu (x) page 593

 - Encyclopedia of American Race Riots, Volume 2 edited by Walter C. Rucker, James N. Upton (x) page 731-734

 - Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History edited by Martha Hodes (x) page 267-282