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Reimagining Black Masculinities: Race, Gender, and Public Space,

In the book, Reimagining Black Masculinities: Race, Gender, and Public Space, editors Mark C. Hopson and Mika’il Petin assemble an array of scholarly works that, in the words of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., make the reimaging of Black masculinities “pregnant with possibilities.” And while Hopson and Petin define imagination as “the process whereby we stimulate new knowledge” (p. 1), I’m reminded of a quote by Albert Einstein that states the following: “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Our ability to imagine, to dream, and to envision infinite possibilities are the fundamental building-blocks of epistemology. Thus, it is clear from the works in this edited volume that the various authors were able to ground their “infinite possibilities about Black masculinity” into a concrete researchable reality situated in what Jackson says is “the confluence between Black masculinity, activism and the public”(p. xiii). The strength of the book involves a variety of exemplars of “Black masculinity being reimagining” for analysis. As a scholar of rhetoric and popular culture, the topics caught my interest. The scholarly pieces, which mostly derive from the communication discipline, in Reimagining Black Masculinities focus on such topics as “Mama’s Boys,” Colin Kaepernick, “Black Masculinity and Outkast,” “Hegemonic Masculinity in the Black Panther Movie,” “Bad Bunny and Latin Trap Music,” and “a conversation on Black masculinity with the principal of a charter schools for Black boys in Baltimore, Maryland. One of the chapters related to popular culture I found the most interesting was McFerguson’s “Outkasted Black Masculinity: Shifting the Geographical and Performative Landscape of 1990s Hip-Hop.” McFerguson’s analysis of Andre’ 3000 of Outkast is spot on. Through the critical lens of autoethnography, McFerguson reveals not only the way in which Andre’ 3000 reimages Black masculinity via his performance of eccentric fashion choices or his emphasis on consciousness and self-discovery over Black violence, but moreover how McFegurson finds Black masculine space for himself within the context of Andre’ 3000 that allows him to expand his own notions of Black masculine identity. Moreover, both Andre’ 3000s performance of a Black masculine persona and Tyler Perry’s performance of gender, i.e. the Madea persona (Morrison et al. 2015) are a true testament the power of performance and how it intersects with identity and gender. Overall, Reimagining Black Masculinities: Race, Gender, and Public Space is an important and necessary read. Mark C. Hopson and Mika’il Petin’s book is an important addition to the continued discussion concerning Black Masculinity as we look to “reimage” Black life in post-pandemic America. The text would be excellent for an undergraduate senior seminar course on Black Masculinity and communication or a graduate level course. https://doi.org/10.1080/10646175.2021.1947423