LGBTQIA+ Scholar Series: The Gayl Jones School of Queer Care: Cat Lawson and Consequence in Corregidora

For Gayl Jones’ neo-slave narrative novel Corregidora (1975), the reading and reception of descriptions of harm tend to overshadow descriptions of care for others. Among the casualties of such reading, we find the character Cat Lawson--her actions, her absent-presence, and her queer intimacy with protagonist Ursa Corregidora hinging on something other than desire. This talk engages in a painfully close reading of that intimacy and finds that Cat’s literary and cultural consequence is not the flat homophobic harm she is often reduced to. Instead, I argue that Cat engages in a practice of black queer care that we still struggle to recognize today.

[Content Warning: The novel includes (and the event lecture may include) descriptions of domestic violence, physical violence, rape and sexual assault, incest and intergenerational violence, childhood sexual violence, lynching, racial enslavement, sexual enslavement, disfigurement, castration, and homophobic language. No visual imagery will be depicted/shared.]

Ianna Hawkins Owen (he/none) is an assistant professor at BU in the English department and the African American & Black Diaspora Studies program. He works at the intersections of blackness, asexuality, and critical eating studies; organizes a seasonal gathering called "Communion: Queer & Trans Memorial & Mourning"; and makes games. Ianna's first book project, Ordinary Failure: Diaspora's Limits & Longings, is under contract with Duke; his second book project in progress, This Time Without Feeling: Reading Black Asexual Affects, received a Mellon Emerging Faculty Leaders award.

LGBTQIA+ Scholar Series events are open to all members of the BU community including students and alums. Please check out the list of all BU faculty talks this academic year https://www.bu.edu/thecenter/programs-services/scholar-series/