To write a book feels like a wondrous thing. This book, in particular, emerges from the generosity of those around me. I am deeply grateful for those who have shared their work, their thoughts, and their lives with me.
First, I would like to thank Lyle Ashton Harris, Kara Walker, Judy Chicago, Mickalene Thomas, Xandra Ibarra, Amber Hawk Swanson, Cheryl Dunye, Carrie Mae Weems, Nao Bustamante, Patty Chang, and Maureen Catbagan. Some of these artists I know and others I do not, but all have created works of art to inspire radical forms of thought.
I have also had the benefit of being enmeshed in several supportive academic and intellectual communities. The early stages of this book were developed in conversations with the Sexual Politics and Sexual Poetics Collective, so I thank them for listening and nudging the project forward: Kadji Amin, Katie Brewer Ball, Ramzi Fawaz, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, Uri McMillan, Roy Pérez, Jennifer Row, Shante Smalls, Jordan Stein, and Damon Young. At Washington University in St. Louis, I thank my colleagues in the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department: Rebecca Wanzo, Trevor Sangrey, Linda Nicholson, Bahia Munem, Julie Moreau, Jeffrey McCune, Donna Kepley, Andrea Friedman, Mary Ann Dzuback, Amy Cislo, Rachel Brown, Barbara Baumgartner, Cynthia Barounis, and Jaime Ake. The Voice and Sexuality working group has been a particular source of delight and thought over the past several years, thanks to: Anna Bialek, Cynthia Barounis, Pat Burke, Denise Gill, Dana Logan, Jasmine Mahmoud, Paige McGinley, Rhaisa Williams. Thanks to Rebecca Wanzo and Jean Allman at the Center for Humanities for providing generous support for the project. I am also grateful for support from Pannill Camp, Adrienne Davis, Diane Lewis, Anne-Marie McManus, Mel Micir, Anca Parvelescu, Anika Walke and the wonderful students I have been fortunate enough to share classroom space with. This project was being completed as I began my position at George Washington University, but I am already grateful to colleagues there for thinking with me as it neared completion. Within the broader reaches of academia, I have also benefited enormously from friendship, guidance, and conversations with John Andrews, Anjali Arondekar, Anna Bialek, Tyler Bradway, Jayna Brown, Josh Chambers-Letson, Rebecca Colesworthy, Niamh Duggan, David Eng, Danny Fox, Leon Hilton, Summer Kim, Isaac Nakhimovksy, Tavia Nyong’o, Ann Pellegrini, Roy Pérez Joe Pierce, Alex Pittman, Emily Owens, Elliot Powell, Chitra Ramalingam, Ivan Ramos, Jordy Rosenberg, Riley Snorton, Gus Stadler, Karen Tongson, Hentyle Yapp, Jeanne Vacarro, and Nasser Zakariya.
There are also several individuals who have spent hours reading, discussing, and thinking about brown jouissance. They have given me citations, nudges, and inspiration. Most importantly, however, they have also spoken to me about other things, enriched my life with their presence, and provided an abundance of celebration. For their friendship, I thank Kadji Amin, Emily Bolton, Larissa Chernock, Stephanie Clare, Ankur Ghosh, Michael Gillespie, Uri McMillan, Paige McGinley, Jennifer Nash, and Jasbir Puar. However, I share my deepest debt of gratitude to Maureen Catbagan, who has been integral to the shaping of this book and its larger political project. Through countless hours of conversation, many, many drafts, many dinners, and much art, Maureen has pushed me toward the forest, toward the parts of thought that I found scariest and hardest. I am grateful for their strength, their generosity, their brilliance, and their care. Where I hesitated, they insisted. This book would not have been possible without their and our collaboration.
This book and this life would not have been possible without the guidance and support of my family, who keep me grounded and also let me see the clouds. Thank you for your care, love, and willingness to share in joy with me, Camille, John, Thomas, and Ashley.
Throughout the writing and thinking process, I have been profoundly grateful to have had the opportunity to share parts of this book with many communities, including: the University of California, Los Angeles, the State University of New York, Stonybrook, Haverford College, Indiana University, Wesleyan University, the Queer Worldings workshop at McGill University, the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at New York University, Northwestern University, the Sex Conference at University of Pennsylvania, the Hortense Spillers Symposium at Cornell University, George Washington University, Illinois State University-Normal, Rutgers University, Georgetown University, Saint Lawrence University, University of North Carolina, University of Washington, York University and the Sexuality Studies Institute, the Feminist Theory workshop in Dubrovnik, Croatia, the State University of New York, Cortland, the American Studies Association, the National Women’s Studies Association, and the Association for the Arts of the Present. I am enormously grateful for the conviviality, suggestions, and intellectual engagement that emerged in these spaces.
I am also extremely grateful to have received funding from a Ruth Landes Memorial Fellowship in 2015. This grant enabled me to take a year’s leave, which gave me mental space to dream up and begin this project. A 2017 Arts Writer’s Grant from the Creative Capital | Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant Program gave me more time and money to complete the project. I am deeply grateful to these funding bodies for believing in the project and supporting it materially. I am also grateful to Washington University in St. Louis and The George Washington University for allowing me to take advantage of these grants and to the Center for Humanities for funding summer research on the project.
Finally, Sensual Excess: Queer Femininity and Brown Jouissance has benefited enormously from support from New York University Press. I thank Josh Chambers-Letson, Tavia Nyong’o, and Ann Pellegrini for their sustained conversations about the book and including it in the Sexual Cultures series. Eric Zinner, Lisha Nadkarni, and Dolma Ombadykow have guided the book through the publication process with grace and speed. I am grateful for comments for reviewers, anonymous and not, and indexer Josh Rutner. I thank Nao Bustamante, Xandra Ibarra, Amber Hawk Swanson, Maureen Catbagan, and the Guggenheim Museum for giving me permission to reproduce their works of art. Portions of the manuscript have been published in altered form elsewhere. A version of the introduction appears as “Surface-Becoming: Lyle Ashton Harris and Brown Jouissance,” Women and Performance 28, no. 1 (2018): 34–45, a version of the first chapter appears as “Queering Sugar: Kara Walker’s Sugar Sphinx and the Intractability of Black Female Sexuality,” Signs: Journal of Women and Culture 42, no. 1 (2016): 1–22; and small portions of “On the Orgasm of the Species: Female Sexuality and Sexual Difference,” Feminist Review 102 (2012): 1–20 appear in chapters two and four. I am grateful for permission to reprint portions of those essays here.