Flamboyants: The Queer Harlem Renaissance I Wish I’d Known

Unconditional self-love and the courage to embrace authenticity are commendable, especially in a world with judgment and systemic barriers.

TIME100 award-winning non-binary author, activist, and journalist, George M. Johnson, explores early-20th-century Blackness and Queerness in “Flamboyants: The Queer Harlem Renaissance I Wish I’d Known.”

As the author of the New York Times bestseller memoir-manifesto, “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” Johnson is no stranger to putting their truth to paper.

Throughout “Flamboyants,” Johnson focuses on the fascinating lives of Ethel Waters, Ma Rainey, Zora Neale Hurston, Josephine Baker, Bessie Smith, Gladys Bentley, Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Countee Cullen, Alain Locke, Richard Bruce Nugent, Claude McKay, and Jimmie Daniels.

From airing out the scandalous marriage between Coulee Cullen and Yolande Du Bois, W.E.B. Du Bois’s daughter, to a sobering reality of entertainers returning to the heteronormative closet, “Flamboyants” is a must-read.

With thought-provoking essays, illustrations by Charly Palmer, and poetry, “Flamboyants” unravels Black creative artists’ challenges while navigating their complex and multifaceted identities.

The memoir is an ode to the greats who came before us and made it possible for us to live more freely and proudly.