A01=Alix Chapman
African diasporic traditions
Author_Alix Chapman
belonging
BET Black Entertainment Network
Beyonce
Big Freedia
Black church
Black political struggle
Black queer club
bottom knowledge
Bounce music
Category=AVA
Category=JBSJ
Category=JBSL
Category=JHMC
childhood
collective joy
community theater
Congo Square
cultural appropriation
cultural geography
da Cru
disaster capitalism
displacement
Drake
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_music
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
family history
Geographic bottoms
homophobia
Hurricane Katrina
Magnolia Shorty
memory
mind-body divide
Neoliberal gentrification
New Orleans
performance ethnography
popular culture
public health
public housing projects
queer normativity
secular and sacred
social bonding
social reproduction
Toni Morrison
transphobia
twerking
Vockah Redu
Product details
- ISBN 9781478038610
- Weight: 445g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 17 Mar 2026
- Publisher: Duke University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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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.
Alix Chapman is Assistant Professor of African American Studies at Emory University.
