GENER AL INTEREST
Ezili’s Mirrors
Imagining Black Queer Genders
omise ’ eke natasha tinsle y
Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley is Associate Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas and author of Thiefing Sugar: Eroticism between
•• E zili ’ s mirrors •• I magI nIng Bl ack Que e r g e nder s
Women in Caribbean Literature, also published by Duke
From the dagger mistress Ezili Je Wouj and the gender-bending mermaid Lasiren to the beautiful femme queen Ezili Freda, the Ezili pantheon of Vodoun spirits rep‑
University Press.
resent the divine forces of love, sexuality, prosperity, pleasure, maternity, creativity, and fertility. And just as Ezili appears in
“Omise’eke Tinsley’s mesmerizing text conjures another
different guises and characters, so too
way to know the many worlds we sense around us. This book is queer kinky black femme theory swimming in the
does Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley in her
salty waters of sex, politics, and the promise of love and
voice- and genre-shifting, exploratory
revolution; ideas rubbed down with coconut oil, fugitive
book Ezili’s Mirrors. Drawing on her back‑
herstories, and a fertile tongue; this polyrhythmic word
ground as a literary critic as well as her
map enacts a ritual that invites you to surrender and emerge forever changed. Say yes.”— JUANA MARÍA RODRÍGUEZ , author of Sexual Futures, Queer Gestures,
quest to learn the lessons of her spiri‑ Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley
tual ancestors, Tinsley theorizes black Atlantic sexuality by tracing how con‑
and Other Latina Longings
temporary queer Caribbean and African American writers and performers evoke Ezili. Tinsley shows how Ezili is manifest in the work and personal lives of sing‑ ers Whitney Houston and Azealia Banks, novelists Nalo Hopkinson and Ana Lara, performers MilDred Gerestant and Sharon Bridgforth, and filmmakers Anne Lescot and Laurence Magloire—none of whom identify as Vodou practitioners. In so doing, Tinsley offers a model of queer black feminist theory that creates new possibilities for decolonizing queer studies. “Challenging traditional reading practices so as to generate original and convincing comparative analyses, Ezili’s Mirrors is at once an extraordinary piece of scholarship and a true work of art.”— K AIAMA L. GLOVER , author of Haiti Unbound: A Spiralist Challenge to the Postcolonial Canon
also by Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley
Thiefing Sugar: Eroticism between Women in Caribbean Literature paper, $25.95 / £20.99 978-0-8223-4777-4 / 2010 Available as an e-book
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BL ACK QUEER STUDIES/RELIGION
February 240 pages, 8 photographs paper, 978‑0‑8223‑7038‑3, $25.95tr/£20.99 cloth, 978‑0‑8223‑7030‑7, $99.95/£83.00 Available as an e‑book