I wanted to plug this book while I’m still blogging for you all. It’s a memoir by Gary L. Lemons, a former professor of mine, who had a large influence on the development of my politics. I took a number of his classes when I was in college, more than of any other professor. He taught feminist and womanist studies, and he did it very well. Those classes stay with me. The experiences of shared learning in the better ones, the ones where everyone was committed (and not dominated by those running out of the room crying because Talking About Race is BOO! Scary!) were among the most powerful I’ve ever experienced.
So I was thrilled to finally hold Gary’s Book in my hands. Black Male Outsider: Teaching as a Pro-Feminist Man chronicles his experiences as a black man teaching feminist and womanist theory in majority white classrooms, analyzing struggles and success and the utility of such a project in the first place. He also recalls his childhood in Arkansas, including the domestic abuse that marked his family life and began to shape his understanding of patriarchy. Lemons also talks in some depth about the often-silenced trauma of sudden schooling integration, as experienced by himself and countless other black kids. As someone who knew Gary as an adult, reading about his childhood as a shy boy who felt outside of raced and gendered high school norms was especially moving. Reading his recreation of his journey to radical politicization was a strange and stirring experience, reminding me both of my times in his classroom, the path that lead me there from my own childhood.
Black Male Outsider is both challenging and inspiring in its narrative of moving from silence to voice, of healing. This is a rigorous, radical work I recommend highly to anyone dedicated to feminist and/or womanist praxis.