A Poetics of Resistance: African American Oral Tradition as a Device of Resilience in Black Gay Men's Poetry

This study is grounded in the poetry featured in the 1988 anthology Other Countries: Black Gay Voices and seeks to identify and explain the role of African American oral tradition as a means of resistance and resilience in the... [ view full abstract ]

This study is grounded in the poetry featured in the 1988 anthology Other Countries: Black Gay Voices and seeks to identify and explain the role of African American oral tradition as a means of resistance and resilience in the poetry of Black Gay men during the 1980s AIDS crisis in New York. Their work communicates central themes of performance of self, as manifested through one’s body, and the sense of belonging found in a community of men who have experienced the intersectional oppression founded in racism and homophobia. In this presentation, I focus on three major points: the poetry collective Other Countries’ response to discrimination in the 1980s AIDS crisis in New York, the critical theories central to this poetry analysis, and the rhetorical strategies present in African American oral tradition to then do a close reading of the anthology’s final poem “Arrow Park” by C.R. Pouncy.

As the last poem in the anthology, “Arrow Park” responds to the themes of displacement and loss in the earlier poems by celebrating the power of community organizing. Employing common rhetorical strategies that draw upon Christian themes, the poets align their work with the spirituals and folklore that inspired the endurance of oppressed groups throughout American history. Other Countries embodies African American oral tradition’s valuing of an individual’s interaction with multiple perspectives to produce community rhetoric. Because AIDS took the lives of so many potential contributors to this cultural canon of literature, this anthology serves as a record of a community’s collective survival through printed language and gives a voice to its lost members. This writing community does not seek to rewrite history but instead to reclaim history by valuing the perspective of multiple voices to provide an accurate and inclusive representation of American history. As more than just a publication but also a community of writers, Other Countries heals the ailing bodies that contribute to the canon of Black Gay men’s writing and uses poetry as a message of hope in response to the despair of the AIDS crisis.