Maurice O. Wallace examines the historical construction of Black masculinity in America, tracing how race, gender, sexuality and representation have shaped the possibilities and contradictions of Black male identity across more than two centuries.

Moving through African American literature and cultural history, from the era of slavery through the late twentieth century, Wallace explores the relationship between lived experience and the ideals of manhood imposed, inherited or resisted. Drawing on psychoanalysis, literary criticism, philosophy and visual culture, he considers how Black masculinity has been produced through competing systems of visibility and invisibility, recognition and misrecognition. Particularly compelling is his examination of the gaze: the distinction between being seen as a body and being recognised as a person, and the cultural mechanisms that allow someone to remain unseen even while standing directly before another.

An ambitious contribution to Black studies, gender theory and American literary criticism, this is a book concerned not simply with what masculinity means, but with who has historically possessed the authority to define it, and what becomes possible when those definitions are challenged.

Duke University Press, 2002. Paperback. Light general shelf wear and minor rubbing to the covers. Interior appears clean and well preserved. Very good condition.