Description
Book SynopsisAn innovative and moving study, The Calendar of Loss illuminates how AIDS mourning confounds and traverses how we have come to think about loss and grief, insisting that the bereaved can confront death in the face of shame and stigma in eloquent ways that imply a fierce political sensibility and a longing for justice.
Trade ReviewEarly AIDS mourning, especially by gay men of color, is more than worthy of study. However, with the recent rise of Black Lives Matter, Woubshet's larger questions about the ways in which mourning structures Black subjectivity and the political value of sorrow in the midst of unspeakable loss make this work especially timely. In
The Calendar of Loss, Woubshet brings together queer studies and African-Americans' studies to examine a rich and varied "archive of mourning" . . . Herein lies Woubshet's chief contribution to AIDS scholarship, as he reads the mourning of both Black and White gay men through an analytical lens that is explicitly both Black and queer. Whereas much of the critical AIDS scholarship has marginalized people of color, and particularly queer people of color, here they take center stage.
—Dan Royles, Florida International University, Modesto Maidique Campus,
National Political Science ReviewWoubshet's text demonstrates the indispensability of the arts to more democratic imaginings of the history, aesthetics, and politics of AIDS. A model of interdisciplinary scholarship, the book develops a new theory of mourning that will be of interest to scholars in African diaspora studies, queer studies, literary studies, gender and sexuality studies, and American studies. Woubshet's engagement with critical theory makes the text appealing to specialists and graduate students, but the author's careful distillation of these theories through lucid prose makes the book accessible to multiple readers, including undergraduates and community activists.
—Darius Bost,
CallalooTable of ContentsPreface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Looking for the Dead
1. Lyric Mourning
2. Archiving the Dead
3. Visions of Loss
4. Epistles to the Dead
Conclusion
Tallying Loss
Notes
Index
