The Only Way Out: The Racial and Sexual Performance of Escape - Softcover

Brewer Ball, Katherine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1478030275 ISBN 13: 9781478030270

Publisher: Duke University Press, 2024

Synopsis

In The Only Way Out, Katherine Brewer Ball explores the American fascination with the escape story. Brewer Ball argues that escape is a key site for exploring American conceptions of freedom and constraint. Stories of escape are never told just once but become mythic in their episodic iterations, revealing the fantasies and desires of society, the storyteller, and the listener. While white escape narratives have typically been laden with Enlightenment fantasies of redemption where freedom is available to any individual willing to seize it, Brewer Ball explores how Black and queer escape offer forms of radical possibility. Drawing on Black studies, queer theory, and performance studies, she examines a range of works, from nineteenth-century American literature to contemporary queer of color art and writing by contemporary American artists including Wilmer Wilson IV, Tourmaline, Tony Kushner, Junot Díaz, Glenn Ligon, Toshi Reagon, and Sharon Hayes. Throughout, escape emerges as a story not of individuality but of collectivity and entanglement.

About this title

About the Author

Katherine Brewer Ball is Assistant Professor of Theater at Wesleyan University.

Edition details

• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1478030275
• ISBN 13: 9781478030270
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224