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This essay performs a quare reading of the film Moonlight to demonstrate how the film illuminates an alternative path to sexual selfhood that is paradoxically facilitated not by access to material wealth or socioeconomic mobility, but rather through abject poverty. Through what the author refers to as a "makeshift masculinity, " the use of Yoruba cosmology, and an analysis of sexuality, the essay traces the various stages of the protagonist Little/Chiron/Blacks life and his relationship with his friend, Kevin, to highlight how a working-class epistemology might offer a different understanding of black same-sex desire.
in late summer of 2016,1 was contacted by a representative at A24 Films, the distributor for the film Moonlight. A24 was setting up screenings of the film at various theaters around the country in advance of the official release in late fall. I ended up attending two screenings before the film's official release-one in a large theater in downtown Chicago and one at a smaller, neighborhood theater, which included a talkback discussion with Tarell Alvin McCraney, upon whose short story, "In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue," the film is based. At both screenings I sat spellbound by the images washing over me. Never before had I viewed a film that engaged black queer sexuality and gender in such a complex and non-stereotypical way. I was also struck by the director Barry Jenkins's cinematographic choices, which included the use of silence, stillness, landscape, lightness and darkness, etc.-not to mention the incredible performances by the cast. During the talkback discussion with McCraney-lead by film historian Jacqueline Stewart and myself-I was also struck by the composition of the audience: a sea of black and brown youth who sat speechless for a few minutes after the film credits, many weeping, while they absorbed what they had just witnessed.
Given the uniqueness of Moonlight in terms of its mostly unknown cast and its focus on the coming of age story about a young black queer boy from the South, I never imagined that the film would go on to garner the kind of critical acclaim it eventually did, being nominated for eight Academy Awards and taking home three, including the Best Adapted Screenplay (Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney), Best Performance by an Actor...