There’s a Disco Ball Between Us

“A genre-transcending meditation on one of the most undertheorized periods in Black queer history, There’s a Disco Ball Between Us is a timely and necessary account of what the period leading up to, during, and after the long shadow of the 1980s means for the current moment in Black queer world-making. At once poetic and playful, it pushes the boundaries of traditional scholarship, providing a methodology for analyzing Black queer culture. To use the vernacular of the ballroom children, folks are going to gag at its deft reads, melodic writing, and creative rendering of Black queer history.” -- E. Patrick Johnson, author of * Honeypot: Black Southern Women Who Love Women *
“In this innovative and generously envisioned book, Jafari S. Allen presents an unprecedented consideration of Black queerness as he weaves together a loving tapestry of Black feminist and Black queer theorists that spans half a century of critical work. Suffused with the ‘Blackfullness’ of queer love, loss, and world-making, There’s a Disco Ball Between Us is a lyrical, incisive, history-making, and paradigm-shifting work.” -- Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley, author of * Ezili’s Mirrors: Imagining Black Queer Genders *
"A book to re-read in order to reach new depths, to see the reflections from the disco ball from yet another angle. . . . I strongly recommend this book to scholars and student within academia, across disciplines, to artists, writers, and activists outside of academia – to anyone seeking to explore and become more intimate with Black gay (and queer) habits of mind." -- Rebecka Rehnström * Anthropology Book Forum *
"There’s a Disco Ball Between Us anthologizes desire as a glittering communal practice of Black/gay habit: as a moment of recognition between kith if not kin, as acknowledgement even if in quarrel, shifting lives in and out of time, dancing freedom." -- Sharanya * Full Stop *
"This text does not shy away from the intellectual tradition of Black feminist affect in which it exists. Instead, Allen invites the reader into an experience that can work, if they choose to work it. Allen’s register is sharp, to the bone, and it shines. At times, I wondered if I was grown enough to know these things, or well read enough to show up to this conversation and hang. . . . For Allen, Black gay life is a refraction of fantasy and action. His critical ethnography builds upon a Black feminist drive to create embodied narratives. . . . His prose and rigorous engagement with the long 1980s invite the reader into conversation with a litany of elder co-conspirators."
  -- Charlene A. Carruthers * Public Books *
"Jafari Allen’s There’s a Disco Ball Between Us has been so helpful and clarifying for me. . . ." -- Ashon Crawley * Public Books *
"At once an intellectual history, a manifesto, a self-reflexive ethnography, and a memoir, Allen’s book is a genre-defying text that revises our understanding of the Black experience." -- Frank Andrew Guridy * Public Books *
“Allen has skillfully woven together the experiences of an ‘anthologized generation’ without falling into the trap of eliding them. Rather, like a disco ball, the many reflections and refractions come together to form a theory of Black gay life that is at once coherent and infinitely diverse.” -- Baird Campbell * American Anthropologist *
"Truly expansive. . . a call to read, think, and act differently." -- Emily R. Bock * Black Perspectives *
"A stunning and ambitious model. . . . There’s a Disco Ball Between Us advances a vision for Black Queer historical inquiries, inquiries that utilize interdisciplinary methods, trouble conventional historical periodization, (re)constitute expansive archives and centers the Diaspora. This book stands as a comprehensive intellectual, social, and political history of Black queer life globally during the last five decades." -- Jennifer Dominique Jones * Black Perspectives *

"Rather than seeking to define Black gay life as any one experience, Allen deftly makes room for the multiplicity of experiences and perspectives that have nonetheless been anthologized as a bounded, coherent group. ... [He] has skillfully woven together the experiences of an “anthologized generation” without falling into the trap of eliding them."

-- Baird Campbell * American Ethnologist *
"This breathtakingly innovative book pulls together a remarkable collection of Black feminist and queer theorists into a generous, important, and personal meditation on the past and futures of Black queerness. And don’t let the fact that the book’s academic drag discourage or put you off: the running House and Disco soundtrack alone will keep you vogueing thought the pages." -- Reginald Harris * Lambda Book Review *