The Golden Girls: Tales from the Lanai

The Golden Girls: Tales from the Lanai is an accessible collection that explores the cultural, industrial, and historical impact of that beloved American sitcom. Edited by Taylor Cole Miller and Alfred L. Martin, Jr., this anthology brings together a diverse range of voices that model different media studies approaches to researching and critically analyzing television texts. The Golden Girls reclaims the production history and development of the show, opens new conversations about audiences–especially Black, queer, and female audiences–and provides new insight into the meteoric rise in popularity of The Golden Girls as a 2020s cultural phenomenon. With twelve original chapters and extensive original interviews offering readers rare insights behind the scenes, the book is a long day’s journey into the marinara of The Golden Girls–an immersive, engaging opportunity for readers to learn more about the show. It truly is the golden age of The Golden Girls.

Taylor Cole Miller is an assistant professor of media studies at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.

Alfred L. Martin Jr. is an associate professor and chair of the Department of Cinematic Arts at the University of Miami. He is the author of Fandom for Us, by Us: The Pleasures and Practices of Black Audiences and The Generic Closet: Black Gayness and the Black-Cast Sitcom, and editor of Rolling: Blackness and Mediated Comedy.