After the Party

Joshua Chambers-Letson is Associate Professor of Performance Studies at Northwestern University and author of After the Party: A Manifesto for Queer of Color Life (2018).

"After the Party is indeed a manifesto: transparent in its politics and elegant in its prose, it takes the temperature of contemporary politics and offers 'a tactical manual' for survival and transformation … After the Party is a love letter to performance, excavating its efficacy beyond commodification and toward sustenance. With gorgeous prose and unapologetic politics, the author offers this book as a gift … Chambers-Letson invites us to the party, to commit to the transformative and embodied labor of performance that might bestow 'more life.'" (Kareem Khubchandani, Global Performance Studies) "After the Party is a necessary and fearlessly original text, which pushes against the conventions of the academic monograph, suggesting something closer to a 'travel guide' or 'tactical manual.'" (This Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory) "The book is exactly what we need after a year and an uprising that brought increased attention to systemic racism and the unequal distribution of life and death. It is a "travel guide and…tactical manual" (5) that could be called prophetic—but only if you have not been paying attention. This is not an indictment, but a compliment to Chambers-Letson's work [...] Museum, memorial, and memento mori, After the Party challenges readers to imagine creative ways of living through this moment, and meaningful ways of honoring those we have lost, those we are losing, those we are going to lose." (The Black Scholar) "A luminous reflection on mourning, care, and being together. Through deft and intimate analyses, Chambers-Letson assembles a group of insurgents, minoritarian performers whose meditations on survival, death, and collectivity provide the basis for a new theory of communism. These performers show us snippets of space where the violences of neoliberalism, racism, and homophobia are met with howls, defiance, and a turn toward community. These are moments where life persists and this book brings you there." - Amber Jamilla Musser, author of Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism "Joshua Chambers-Letson invites us to the party in his beautifully written consideration of the collective functions of performance for more livable black and brown, queer and trans worlds. In a series of cogent readings of various forms of performance across the twentieth century, from Nina Simone to Tseng Kwong Chi, After the Party is a treatise and a handbook for queer and trans of color survival. A timely book and an urgent read!" - C. Riley Snorton, author of Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity "This is the ongoing process of survival and sustenance that propels Chambers-Letson's rich theorizations of minoritarian performance, which continuously labours towards 'More Life' in the ongoing work of getting free and bringing your loved ones with you while doing it, even if they have passed on." (Asian Diaspora Visual Cultures and the Americas) "Chambers-Letson takes up Muñoz's work and expands on this to focus on how to deal with the overwhelming death of queer and trans people of color." (Journal of American Culture)