This is a remarkable set of linked essays on the African American male experience. Alexander picks a number of settings that highlight Black male interaction, sexuality, and identity_the student-teacher interaction, the black barbershop, drag queen performances, the funeral eulogy. From these he builds a theory of Black masculine identity using auto-ethnography and ideas of performance as his base.

By Bryant Keith Alexander

1 Introduction: Exploring Modalities and Subjectiveness that Shape Social Relations
2 Crossing Borders and Changing Customs: Moments When the Spectator Becomes the Spectacle
3 Placement and Displacement of Black Identity: The Case of Migration across Borders from Campus to Community
4 Passing, Cultural Performance and Individual Agency: Performative Reflections on Black Masculine Identity
5 (Re) Visioning the Ethnographic Site: Interpretive Ethnography, Performing Drag, and Feminist Pedagogy
6 Fading, Twisting, and Weaving: An Interpretive Ethnography of the Black Barbershop/Salon as Cultural Space
7 "Were/Are, Fort/Da": The Eulogy as Constitutive (Auto)biography (or, Traveling to Coalesce a Public Memory)