Evidence of Being: The Black Gay Cultural Renaissance and the Politics of Violence, published by University of Chicago Press. Evidence of Being opens on a grim scene: Washington DCs gay black community in the 1980s, ravaged by AIDS, the crack epidemic, and a series of unsolved murders, seemingly abandoned by the government and mainstream culture. Yet in this darkest of moments, a new vision of community and hope managed to emerge. Darius Bosts account of the media, poetry, and performance of this time and place reveals a stunning confluence of activism and the arts. In Washington and New York during the 1980s and 90s, gay black men banded together, using creative expression as a tool to challenge the widespread views that marked them as unworthy of grief. They created art that enriched and reimagined their lives in the face of pain and neglect, while at the same time forging a path toward bold new modes of existence. At once a corrective to the predominantly white male accounts of the AIDS crisis and an openhearted depiction of the possibilities of black gay life, Evidence of Being above all insists on the primacy of community over loneliness, and hope over despair. A FREE event. Please RSVP on this event page so we can glean numbers. Doors 7pm. Evidence of Being is both a compelling and informative study and an emotionally moving ritual that beckons present and future black fugitive subjects to remember the importance of the literary arts in surviving and thriving against the perils of anti-black and anti-gay violence, politics, and culture. Bost eloquently answers Melvin Dixons call to remember with broad vision the empowering force of black gay being and cultural imagination. - L. H. Stallings, author of Funk the Erotic Darius Bost is assistant professor of ethnic studies in the School for Cultural and Social Transformation at the University of Utah.

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