Bulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies: Performance, Race, and Sexuality in the Harlem Renaissance by James F. Wilson (review)

James Wilson's compelling study maps the intersection of race, identity, and sexuality (including gay and lesbian identity) in Harlem Renaissance performance using socio-historic and performance criticism to contextualize the individuals and the performances within their respective social, historical, and cultural milieu. Wilson cogently argues that depictions of race and gender in performance were "often highly ambiguous, ambivalent, and bewildering" throughout the 1920s and 1930s (3). His clear, accessible historical analysis considers interviews, newspaper accounts, and reviews to illuminate forgotten but once-popular scripts, songs, and performances of the 1920s and 1930s.

Although his justification for his selection of representative case studies is not fully articulated, Wilson finds a cohesive structure to unify his five chapters and conclusion with titles inspired from the lyrics of period jazz and blues songs. Acknowledging the era's inherent contradictions (and consciously refusing to resolve them), the author frames each chapter as an "expository snapshot" revealing the "social and professional connections between artists, audiences, and critical observers" (8).

While I largely admire the vast terrain of the study, I have a few minor quibbles regarding the book's organizational structure and its particular pairings of chapter subjects. Chapter 1 focuses on the rent parties and the gay and lesbian demimonde. Chapter 2 highlights Wallace Thurman and William Jourdan Rapp's melodrama Harlem (1929). Chapter 3 treats drag balls and the influential Broadway melodrama Lulu Belle (1926). Chapter 4 traces the careers and critical response to the subversive work of Florence Mills and Ethel Waters and their allegiance to the homosexual community. Similarly, chapter 5 turns to Gladys Bentley and follows the same model as the previous chapter. Although the author wants to draw parallels between the subjects that divide his chapters, their connections are not always clear. This reader would prefer more explicit pairings, particularly in the first two chapters. Chapter 2, for example, seems the least cohesive; its trajectory departs from the author's central vision.

Chapter 1's dual purpose investigates the rent parties of the 1920s as a "crucial site of inquiry" in the Harlem Renaissance (12) and attends to the dynamics of "public/private spaces and racial/sexual identity within the shifting political and cultural geographies" of New York (29). These topics share common ground, as the author maintains that rent parties supported an alternative network for gay men and lesbians and offered a supportive environment for performers to nurture new material. Yet the second half of this chapter shifts somewhat abruptly to focus on the gay and lesbian presence in Harlem and in performances. Wilson hits his stride providing an overview of responses to homosexuality, including the virulent homophobic accounts in the tabloid Broadway Brevities, which frequently named homosexuals in the industry and revealed the stomping grounds of gay men and lesbians.

Chapter 2 is concerned with the complicated tensions in representing and defining an authentic African-American identity. Wilson sets out to illustrate how Harlem embodied contradictory attempts to "define the 'real' Harlem" (44). The best part of this chapter provides a persuasive analysis of the work and its impact on identity and finds "not a fixed cultural identity but one that is constantly transforming" (78).

Chapter 3 is one of the book's finest contributions, focusing on the divisive melodrama Lulu Belle by Edward Sheldon and Charles MacArthur, which indirectly galvanized the queer community. Wilson focuses on how the production sparked great controversy in its day and marshaled both support and criticism from the African-American community for its illustration of race and sexuality. Although Wilson's connections linking Lulu Belle with the drag balls are at times somewhat forced, his readings of Lulu Belle and the annual masquerade competitions are provocative and rich. He persuasively writes of Harlem's drag balls as providing a safe space for homoerotic desire and enabling "social commingling" of...