Primary Sources:
Baldwin, James. Giovanni’s Room. Delta Trade Paperbacks, 2000.
Baldwin, James. Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone; a Novel. Dial Press, 1968.
Koolaids by Rabih Alameddine
Hollinghurst, Alan. The Swimming-Pool Library. First Vintage international edition., Vintage Books, 1989.
Maḥfūẓ, Najīb. Palace Walk. Doubleday, 1990
Maḥfūẓ, Najīb. Palace of Desire. First edition., Doubleday, 1991.
Maḥfūẓ, Najīb. Sugar Street. First edition in the U.S., Doubleday, 1992.
Keywords:
- Queer
- Black Masculinity
- Masculinity
- Homosocial Desire
Journal:
James Baldwin Review. Manchester University Press, 2023.
Secondary Sources:
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble : Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge, 2007.
Donica, Joseph. “‘Addressing a Virus, a War, or Oneself’: Everyday Life in Rabih Alameddine’s Koolaids: The Art of War.” College Literature, vol. 46, no. 2, 2019, pp. 424–52, https://doi.org/10.1353/lit.2019.0017.
Hout, Syrine. “To Paint and Die in Arabic: Code-Switching in Rabih Alameddine’s Koolaids: The Art of War.” Arab Studies Quarterly, vol. 40, no. 4, 2018, pp. 277–99, https://doi.org/10.13169/arabstudquar.40.4.0277.
Hout, Syrine. “Koolaids and Unreal City.” Post-War Anglophone Lebanese Fiction, Edinburgh University Press, 2022, pp. 21–51, https://doi.org/10.1515/9780748643431-005.
Baldwin, James. Collected Essays. Library of America, 1998.
Karmakar, Pritikana, and Nagendra Kumar. “The Body Writes Back: The Pharmacopolitics of Cure and Care in Rabih Alameddine’s Koolaids: The Art of War.” QScience Connect, vol. 2022, no. 3, 2022, https://doi.org/10.5339/connect.2022.medhumconf.28.
Robert F. Reid-Pharr, 1997. “Tearing the Goat’s Flesh: Crisis, Homosexuality, Abjection, and the Production of a Late-Twentieth-Century Black Masculinity”, Novel Gazing: Queer Readings in Fiction, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, and Wayne Koestenbaum. Between Men : English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. Thirtieth anniversary edition, Columbia University Press, 2015, https://doi.org/10.7312/koso17629.
Shannahan, Dervla. “Reading Queer A/Theology into Rabih Alameddine’s Koolaids.” Feminist Theology, vol. 19, no. 2, 2011, pp. 129–42, https://doi.org/10.1177/0966735010383800.
Foucault, Michel, and Robert Hurley. The History of Sexuality. First Vintage Books edition., Vintage Books, 1988.
Explanatory Essay:
In creating the above list of sources and keywords I began with the choice of my primary source options: Giovanni’s Room and Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone. I have decided to write about these texts in particular because I find them to be extremely compelling, and for the most part, they follow Professor Moffat’s advice that we should choose to write about something that we find ourselves thinking about anyway. Indeed, Baldwin’s work is gripping and his ability to create complex characters with interesting identities and relationships makes his novels fascinating.
What I find interesting these works in the nature of relationships between men. How the lines between relationships of a sexual nature, and friendships come to be. With this inquiry in mind, Between Men by Sedgwick is an obvious inclusion. It seems, to me at least, to be absolutely critical reading for the discussion of this topic. I have read excerpts from this particular book in previous courses and enjoyed reading it as well. It seems also, that this line of questioning is tied directly to ideas of queerness, masculinity, and identity. Thus, the inclusion of the above keywords, “Black Masculinity” is specified in this case because Baldwin sees these two as completely intertwined with one another. Following in this thought process I then selected Gender Trouble by Judith Butler and The History of Sexuality by Foucault as understanding the development of sexuality as identity is critical to answering my questions. Further, sexual and gender identity as very tightly tied to one another, and thus Butler’s work is absolutely necessary as well.
Update:
My topic has changed significantly. Over Fall Pause I reread “Koolaids” by Rabih Alameddine and decided that I would like to write about the relationship between Queerness and Death in “Giovanni’s Room” and “Koolaids.” Professor Johnston recommended that I read “The Swimming-Pool Library” and “The Cairo Trilogy” because they cover the two areas that “Koolaids” is about. “The Swimming-Pool Library” is a novel about the AIDS Pandemic, and “The Cairo Trilogy” is a queer narrative set in an Arab country. As such, these books have found their way into my Reading List. My current thinking is that I will most likely abandon Baldwin entirely, and move towards narratives of the AIDS pandemic.
I have also added a number of scholarly sources on “Koolaids” to my list and removed the entire collection of Baldwin’s essays and Foucault from my List. In place of the essay collection I have put “Here Be Dragons” one of my all time favorite Baldwin works. The removal of these sources should better allow me to tackle these complex ideas and focus my energy on subjects more directly related to my area of interest.