Femininity, Abjection, and (Black) Masculinity in James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room and Toni Morrison’s Beloved

Julia Kristeva describes the abject as that which “draws me towards the place where meaning collapses” (Powers of Horror 2). In African American letters, one of the ontological and epistemological places where many African American writers and thinkers, such as Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. DuBois, Leroi Jones, Amiri Baraka, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., have theoretically tried to define meaning and failed is the notion of black masculinity. In many regards, too, they have failed to understand the oppressive nature of compulsory heterosexuality in the black community. Fortunately, the advent and aftermath of the black feminist movement in the early 1970s and recent interests in African American queer theory has made it abundantly clear that heterosexist ideas about black masculinities and sexualities need to be challenged.