No Tea, No Shade: New Writings in Black Queer Studies
E. Patrick Johnson is Carlos Montezuma Professor of Performance Studies and African American Studies at Northwestern University, the coeditor of Blacktino Queer Performance and Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology, and the author of Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity, all also published by Duke University Press.
To Transcender Transgender: Choreographies of Gender Fluidity in the Performances of Mildred Gerestant
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Published:September 2016
Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley, 2016. "To Transcender Transgender: Choreographies of Gender Fluidity in the Performances of Mildred Gerestant", No Tea, No Shade: New Writings in Black Queer Studies, E. Patrick Johnson
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In this essay, Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley analyzes Haitian American performance artist MilDred Gerestant’s recent work, “DanceHaitianGender” and “Transcender.” Integrating the masculine and feminine variations of the lwas within Haitian Vodou, Tinsley maintains that Gerestant pushes against the limits of “transgender” to suggest an alternative in transcender—that is, an engagement with the submerged Caribbean epistemology of syncretic religions. Offering a close reading of “Transcender,” Tinsley explores how and why Gerestant turns to Vodou not merely as a religious practice but also as an epistemology, captured here as the historically specific, creative, and outrageous choreography of black and Caribbean gender.
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