Taste for Brown Bodies

Winner, LGBT Studies Lammy Award presented by Lambda Literary Neither queer theory nor queer activism has fully reckoned with the role of race in the emergence of the modern gay subject. In A Taste for Brown Bodies, Hiram Perez traces the development of gay modernity and its continued romanticization of the brown body. Focusing in particular on three figures with elusive queer histories-the sailor, the soldier, and the cowboy- Perez unpacks how each has been memorialized and desired for their heroic masculinity while at the same time functioning as agents for the expansion of the US borders and neocolonial zones of influence. Describing an enduring homonationalism dating to the "birth" of the homosexual in the late 19th century, Perez considers not only how US imperialist expansion was realized, but also how it was visualized for and through gay men.By means of an analysis of literature, film, and photographs from the 19th to the 21st centuries-including Herman Melville's Billy Budd, Anne Proulx's "Brokeback Mountain," and photos of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison-Perez proposes that modern gay male identity, often traced to late Victorian constructions of "invert" and "homosexual," occupies not the periphery of the nation but rather a cosmopolitan position, instrumental to projects of war, colonialism, and neoliberalism. A Taste for Brown Bodies argues that practices and subjectivities that we understand historically as forms of homosexuality have been regulated and normalized as an extension of the US nation-state, laying bare the tacit, if complex, participation of gay modernity within US imperialism.

Perezs highly sophisticated study gives nuance not only to queer studies but also to critical race theory and American studies. Surely,A Taste for Brown Bodieswill transform our reading methods to redefine future scholarship in our field., Perez offers a provocative study that identifies connections between modern gay identity, sexual desire, US imperialism, and national identity., Tracing the homoerotic archetypes of sailor, cowboy, and soldier, he offers close readings ofBilly BuddandBrokeback Mountainand uses James BaldwinsGoing to Meet the Manto parse images from Abu Ghraib, prodding readers toward a deeper, sometimes uncomfortable understanding of cultural context, colonialism, and complicity., Pérez argues that despite queer studies’ avowed dedication to liberation politics, it remains “susceptible to ...a racial unconscious shaped by nation, empire, and the dispositions of global capitalism”… Pérez’s important book offers an unexpected perspective on queer studies, critiquing it for its unexamined imperialist investments rather than simply celebrating it based on an intuitive assumption about queer theory’s radical potential. Readers should not, however, take Pérez’s critique as an attack on queer theory. Baldwin once said that it was out of his love for America that he insisted on the right to critique; Pérez’s book seems to be written in a similar spirit of critique and love. He writes in the service of “contemporary antiracist queer politics,” and as he argues, without a thorough examination of queer theory’s racial unconscious, the field “remains imperiled” (17)., A compelling contribution to the pivotal turn in queer studies toward a critique of still-emergent forms of homo-normativities. With dazzling close readings of diverse texts, such as James Baldwins 'Going to Meet the Man,' alongside an equally bracing collection of visual texts, Hiram Pérezs book is an impressive critical and analytical performance. Absorbingly written, it never loses sight of the urgency of its core claims and the work that a critically committed queer studies must continue to do.

Hiram Pérez is an Assistant Professor of English at Vassar College.