E. Patrick Johnson's Honeypot opens with the fictional
trickster character Miss B. barging into the home of Dr. EPJ,
informing him that he has been chosen to collect and share the
stories of her people. With little explanation, she whisks the
reluctant Dr. EPJ away to the women-only world of Hymen, where she
serves as his tour guide as he bears witness to the real-life stories
of queer Black women throughout the American South. The women he
meets come from all walks of life and recount their experiences on
topics ranging from coming out and falling in love to mother/daughter
relationships, religion, and political activism. As Dr. EPJ hears
these stories, he must grapple with his privilege as a man and as an
academic, and in the process he gains insights into patriarchy,
class, sex, gender, and the challenges these women face. Combining
oral history with magical realism and poetry, Honeypot is an
engaging and moving book that reveals the complexity of identity
while offering a creative method for scholarship to represent the
lives of other people in a rich and dynamic way.