RE-STORYING BELOVED COMMUNITY: INTERSECTIONAL SOCIAL MOVEMENT STORYTELLING OF ANTIRACIST GAY LIBERATION*

Abstract

This article details intersectional social movement storytelling produced by a racially mixed group of gay men in the 1980s to articulate, and insist upon, antiracist gay liberation. Based on a larger project of narrative ethnography of the organization Black and White Men Together (BWMT), I describe how BWMT drew upon the movement story of an ideal community from the civil rights movement (Beloved Community) and re-storied it to confront a narrow gay movement and reassert an anti-racist gay liberation critique. I trace how they did so via storytelling strategies using (1) “salience work” and (2) what I call “both/and work”— interpretive processes operating to shift the symbolic code of integration and the emotional code of love to be relevant in the complex political context of the 1980s. I conclude by reiterating how these strategies are bound to their times and assert the potential of social movement storytelling for intersectional scholarship.