Are We Not Men?: Masculine Anxiety and the Problem of African-American Identity, (Paperback)

...a thoughtful and provocative meditation on the complex status of the African-American male in American society. This book is essential reading for those seeking to understand how race and gender can be bound together into an oppressive set of stereotypes."--Henry Louis Gates, Jr."Are We Not Men? is an important and sophisticated examination of black masculinity. Harper deftly demonstrates the heretofore rarely explored contradictions in vastly diverse representations of black manhood in American popular culture."--Tricia Rose, author of Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America"This book rises head and shoulders above all the publications on the trendy subject of black masculinity. Phillip Brian Harper writes courageously and without rancor about the common homophobic ground in black high- and low-brow culture, and the common structure of discrimination in white 'serious museum' as well as popular culture."--Manthia Diawara, Professor of Comparative Literature and Film, Director, Africana Studies, NYU"Phillip Brian Harper has an elegant sense of irony, a keen eye for contradiction, and a serious message to convey. These essays on masculinity, race, and homophobia are meticulous, witty, thoughtful, sobering, and absorbing. This is cultural criticism at its best."--Patricia J. Williams, Columbia University Law School"...a thoughtful and provocative meditation on the complex status of the African-American male in American society. This book is essential reading for those seeking to understand how race and gender can be bound together into an oppressive set of stereotypes."--Henry Louis Gates, Jr."Are We Not Men? is an important and sophisticated examination of black masculinity. Harper deftly demonstrates the heretofore rarely explored contradictions in vastly diverse representations of black manhood in American popular culture."--Tricia Rose, author of Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America"This book rises head and shoulders above all the publications on the trendy subject of black masculinity. Phillip Brian Harper writes courageously and without rancor about the common homophobic ground in black high- and low-brow culture, and the common structure of discrimination in white 'serious museum' as well as popular culture."--Manthia Diawara, Professor of Comparative Literature and Film, Director, Africana Studies, NYU"Phillip Brian Harper has an elegant sense of irony, a keen eye for contradiction, and a serious message to convey. These essays on masculinity, race, and homophobia are meticulous, witty, thoughtful, sobering, and absorbing. This is cultural criticism at its best."--Patricia J. Williams, Columbia University Law School