Cotton's queer relations same-sex intimacy and the literature of the southern plantation, 1936-1968 / Michael P. Bibler.

Includes bibliographies and index.

Introduction: in the kitchens and on the verandas -- Nation and plantation between Gone with the wind and black power: the example of Ernest J. Gaines's Of love and dust -- Planters and lovers. Intraracial homoeroticism and the loopholes of taboo in William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! ; Homo-ness and fluidity in Tennessee Williams's Cat on a hot tin roof -- The southern kitchen romance. A queer sense of justice in Lillian Hellman's dramas of the Hubbard family ; Katherine Anne Porter, Margaret Walker, and the uncomfortable compromise of black women's autonomy -- The queer black fraternity. Sex, community, and rebellion in William Styron's The confessions of Nat Turner ; Arna Bontemps's Black thunder: between masculine politics and feminine difference -- Conclusion: on the southern plantation, real love is always ambivalent.

"Finally breaking through heterosexual clichés of flirtatious belles and cavaliers, sinister black rapists and lusty "Jezebels,"Cotton's Queer Relations exposes the queer dynamics embedded in myths of the southern plantation. Focusing on works by Ernest J. Gaines, William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Lillian Hellman, Katherine Anne Porter, Margaret Walker, William Styron, and Arna Bontemps, Michael P. Bibler shows how each one uses figures of same-sex intimacy to suggest a more progressive alternative to the pervasive inequalities tied historically and symbolically to the South's most iconic institution.

Bibler looks specifically at relationships between white men of the planter class, between plantation mistresses and black maids, and between black men, arguing that while the texts portray the plantation as a rigid hierarchy of differences, these queer relations privilege a notion of sexual sameness that joins the individuals as equals in a system where equality is rare indeed. Bibler reveals how these models of queer egalitarianism attempt to reconcile the plantation's regional legacies with national debates about equality and democracy, particularly during the eras of the New Deal, World War II, and the civil rights movement. Cotton's Queer Relations charts bold new territory in southern studies and queer studies alike, bringing together history and cultural theory to offer innovative readings of classic southern texts."--pub. desc.

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