Get Yo' Life

<div>In <i>Get Yo' Life</i> R. J. Millhouse incorporates gender and sexuality studies archival work performance studies and urban studies to craft a historical geography of Black queer public life and culture from the 1960s onward. He does so via case studies of two Brooklyn nightclubs Langston's and Happiness Lounge as patrons fought to preserve their spaces and community in the face of gentrification. Introducing Black queer spatiality as an analytic method and a type of intersectionality-driven memory work Millhouse teases out the nuanced functions of care-work performance and kinship labor along with attendant sensational atmospheric and nostalgic factors as they inform Black queer placemaking practices. These practices-such as resource fairs vogue competitions and the appropriation of public parks as communal places-often face opposition from the police or well-to-do mostly white neighbors. Yet they remain vital sites of Black queer agency. By focusing on the structural powers that condition the lives and placemaking and placekeeping strategies of Black queer people in Brooklyn Millhouse reveals the ways in which people make and preserve place amid state-sanctioned displacement.</div>