Drink up!

When E. Patrick Johnson started recording people's experiences about being black and gay in the South, he hit some roadblocks. Some people canceled their interviews. Others spoke but were reticent. With persistence, he collected tales from every Southern state—enough material to fill his new 570-page book, Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South. The 41-year-old Northwestern University professor of African-American studies shared some thoughts about his interview subjects and his years in the south.

On expectations: "I didn't expect younger narrators to be as conservative about what they talked about. I expected older narrators to not be as forthcoming, but that was not the case. The older men seemed to sort of just put it out there. But the younger men, some of them, kind of held back and didn't share as much. ... Some of the richest interviews I had were with men, say, 50 and older, who shared these wonderful stories about growing up in the South and finding these networks of other gay folk or being in a relationship for 20, 30, 40 years."

On preconceptions: "One of them is that every gay person in the South is repressed and not open about their sexuality, when that is not true. Anyone who reads the chapter on sex will discover that people are doing their thing."

On being Southern and gay: "It was interesting to hear people be very articulate about how those two things come together and how they reconcile all of what that means—for instance, men who understand the South as the Bible Belt but who also, as they came into their sexuality, started to develop what they would call a personal relationship with God, as opposed to a personal relationship with a church. ... For some people, especially people who aren't particularly religious or who live in urban areas -- who don't understand why you would go to a place where the preacher or some of the congregants are going to say homophobic things—they don't understand that if you are raised around the church from the time that you are in the womb, you can't necessarily just cut that part of your life off just because you start to come into your sexuality, because despite the homophobia, there's also lots of encouragement and nurturing that happens in the church."

Know a gay artist? Tell QCA!