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"Examines queer performance and affective response in the Black radical tradition-using work by James Baldwin, Ntozake Shange, Sharon Bridgforth, and vanessa german-to demonstrate how love animates the contemporary prison abolition movement"-- Provided by publisher.

"In Love and Abolition, Alison Rose Reed traces how the social life of Black queer performance from the 1960s to the present animates the unfinished work of abolition. She grounds social justice-oriented reading and activist practices specifically in the movement to abolish the prison industrial complex, with far-reaching implications for how we understand affective response as a mobilizing force for revolutionary change. Reed identifies abolition literature as an emergent field of inquiry that emphasizes social relationships in the ongoing struggle to dismantle systems of coercion, criminalization, and control. Focusing on love as an affective modality and organizing tool rooted in the Black radical tradition's insistence on collective sociality amidst unrelenting state violence, Reed provides fresh readings of visionaries such as James Baldwin, Ntozake Shange, Sharon Bridgforth, and vanessa german. Both abolitionist manifesto and examination of how Black queer performance offers affective modulations of tough and tender love, Love and Abolition ultimately calls for a critical reconsideration of the genre of prison literature--and the role of the humanities--during an age of mass incarceration." -- Provided by publisher.

Black performance and cultural criticism

Introduction: Abolition literature: calling on tough and tender love

Listening for Emmett Till: James Baldwin, Laurie Carlos, and Black love as survival

Transforming harm into healing: Ntozake Shange and the Combahee River Collective

Concrete utopias: activating spirit in the performance worlds of Sharon Bridgforth and Josefina Báez

Love in the streets: Stephanie Leigh Batiste, vanessa german, and vigils for state violence

Contraband love: humanities behind bars and abolition pedagogy

Epilogue: Abolition as renegade presence.

African American prisoners > Social conditions.

Performing arts > Social aspects.

American literature > African American authors > History and criticism.

African American prisoners > Social conditions.

American literature > African American authors.

Performing arts > Social aspects.