The Black Living Room

Abstract

While the Black home is frequently imagined as either a target of state violence or a space from which to flee, a broader Black queer feminist intellectual and cultural archive of Black dwelling spaces reveals the Black home as a paradigmatic site of resistance to state-sanctioned infringements on Black erotic life. This is to say, the Black home is a crucial site of both violence and resistance for Black women living within the heart of US empire. This essay maps a Black feminist intellectual and erotic history of one specific site within the Black home—the "Black living room"—engaging the erotic function of vernacular street art that adorns the living room walls of contemporary, working-class Black women. In the process, the essay contends that the "Black living room" constitutes a discursive and material space within which Black women use material culture and interior design to mount visual campaigns against anti-Black violence and to assert the value of Black erotic being and becoming. The Black home, though mired in anti-Black violence, remains rife with liberatory, insurgent, and erotic potential.