Description
Book SynopsisWinner of the MLA''s 2016 Alan Bray Prize for Best Book in GLBTQ Studies
How BDSM can be used as a metaphor for black female sexuality. The Color of Kink explores black women''s representations and performances within American pornography and BDSM (bondage and discipline, domination and submission, and sadism and masochism) from the 1930s to the present, revealing the ways in which they illustrate a complex and contradictory negotiation of pain, pleasure, and power for black women.
Based on personal interviews conducted with pornography performers, producers, and professional dominatrices, visual and textual analysis, and extensive archival research, Ariane Cruz reveals BDSM and pornography as critical sites from which to rethink the formative links between Black female sexuality and violence. She explores how violence becomes not just a vehicle of pleasure but also a mode of accessing and contesting power. Drawing on feminist and queer theory, critic
Trade Review
The Color of Kink breaks entirely new ground in the study of pornography and sexual cultures. Prioritizing the depathologization of black female sexuality and kink cultural practices, this book is a refreshing breakthrough in black feminist and queer theories of sex. Ariane Cruz offers usable theories that unleash the imagination and lubricate the way we think about black sexual politics. -- Mireille Miller-Young,author of A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women in Pornography
An exciting contribution to sexuality studies and a much-needed corrective to how we think about BDSM. With beautiful and sharp analysis, Ariane Cruz draws from a dazzling array of sources to parse out the pleasures of abjection that make BDSM an apt metaphor for thinking through black female sexuality. A wonderful, provocative book. -- Amber Jamilla Musser,author of Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism
