Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Raising the Bottom: Bounce Music and Black Queer Performance in Post-Katrina New Orleans

Raising the Bottom: Bounce Music and Black Queer Performance in Post-Katrina New Orleans

Chapman, Alix

Paperback

Black American StudiesGLBTQIA StudiesWorld Music

ISBN10: 1478038616
ISBN13: 9781478038610
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: Apr 7 2026
Pages: 196
Weight: 0.59
Height: 0.45 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent mass displacement of black neighborhoods in New Orleans, black queer performers redefined notions of belonging throughout the city. These unlikely figures, such as artists Big Freedia and Vockah Redu, played a significant role in calling the displaced back home and serving as beacons of hope. In Raising the Bottom, Alix Chapman engages in performance ethnography, taking to the stage while writing about the lives of these bounce artists and their extended community. He theorizes an epistemology of the bottom--a way of knowing, praxis, and aesthetic--which contests hierarchies of value that place black and queer bodies at the lowest rungs of the social ladder. By engaging in this bottom episteme, bounce performers leverage pleasure and coalition to transform collectives not meant to survive crisis and disaster. Raising the Bottom shows how black queer artists address, remix, and redirect stereotypes to amplify community power, pleasure, and solidarity.

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