| book details |

The Black Queer Work of Ratchet: Race, Gender, Sexuality, and the (Anti)Politics of Respectability

By (author) Nikki Lane

| on special |

normal price: R 2,307.95

Price: R 2,077.95

| add to trolley |

| book description |

This book enters as a corrective to the tendency to trivialize and (mis)appropriate African American language practices. The word ratchet has entered into a wider (whiter) American discourse the same way that many words in African American English haveâ€”through hip-hop and social media. Generally, ratchet refers to behaviors and cultural expressions of Black people that sit outside of normative, middle-class respectable codes of conduct. Ratchet can functionÂ both as a tool for critiquing bad Black behavior, and as a tool for resisting the notion that there are such things as â€œgoodâ€ and â€œbadâ€ behavior in the first place. This book takes seriously the way ratchet operates in the everyday lives of middle-class and upwardly mobile Black Queer women in Washington, DC who, because of their sexuality, are situated outside of the norms of (Black) respectability. The book introduces the concept of â€œratchet/boojie cultural politicsâ€ which draws from a rich bodyof Black intellectual traditions which interrogate the debates concerning what is and is not â€œacceptableâ€ Black (middle-class) behavior. Placing issues of non-normative sexuality at the center of the conversation about notions of propriety within normative modes of Black middle-class behavior, this book discusses what it means for Black Queer womenâ€™s bodies to be present within ratchet/boojie cultural projects, asking what Black Queer womenâ€™s increasing visibility does for the everyday experiences of Black queer people more broadly.