Beyoncé’s “Welcome to the Renaissance”—which opened every show of her $579.8 million-grossing, 39-city concert tour of 2023—was an invitation to step into a brave world celebrating Black creativity, intersectionality and multi-faceted expressions of sexual identity. It looked back at one of the most impactful moments of intellectualism, social consciousness, and artistic expression in Black History, The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, to help create a better future.
Into this august territory steps author George M. Johnson with his new book Flamboyants: The Queer Harlem Renaissance I Wish I’d Known, a celebration of “writers, performers, and activists from 1920s Black America whose sexualities have been obscured throughout history.”
Through 14 essays, Johnson reveals how American culture has been shaped by icons who are both Black and Queer—and whose stories deserve to be retold, celebrated and remembered.
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Johnson, whose New York Times Best Selling memoir All Boys Aren’t Blue is one of the most banned books in the United States, is at the forefront of the cultural zeitgeist. Flamboyants explores the expansive and intersectional existence of Black queer life from the past to create space for the future.
Native Son asked Johnson five questions about Flamboyants, the Harlem Renaissance, and which historical figure inspires.
Native Son: What is the origin story of Flamboyants?
George M. Johnson: Flamboyants is interesting in the sense that we originally wanted to do this on television or in film. I worked with Twiggy Pucci Garçon, my sister, my best friend. We own a production company together called No Shade. And during the pandemic, after All Boys Aren’t Blue was optioned by Gabrielle Union, we were like, Oh, we wanna create more stories and renaissance-like periods of queerness where the stories have been told either incorrectly or not given the full Black experience. So we were pitching, having general meetings, but the industry was just in a weird place.
I already have two books out. I’m doing great in the Young Adult Space and I live by Tony Morrison’s words: If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it. And it’s like, baby, I should write the book. Originally the book was gonna be more biographical, but it charnged with the illustrations, with the poetry.
Native Son: The Harlem Renaissance was a vibrant, creative, and politically charged era where Black folks thrived. What inspires you most about it?
George M. Johnson: I think the thing that inspired me the most about the Harlem Renaissance was the societal standards. And I mean that in the sense of the Great Depression what was happening in 1929. It was a period of resiliency, period. Just the fact that you have the Women’s Rights Movement, the Women’s Suffrage Movement—there were so many other movements happening at the same time, and mind you, this is still the Harlem Renaissance prior to the actual civil rights movement in the ‘60s. This was a period of amazing Black expansion. This was a period where we really had to go hard in the late 1800s. We started getting our first political offices with the ability to even be able to vote as Black men ’cause Black women were not able to vote.
We were going to expand in every area. We are going to expand arts and culture and Black Wall Street, and all of these things. But for all intents and purposes of this book, it was the beauty of watching pivotal figures—people like Zora Neale Hurston who helped us understand accents, dialect, and Southern culture. I feel like that’s what the Harlem Renaissance was. This was our first inkling of Diasporic work to the masses where you have Josephine Baker. There were just so many of them who traveled overseas and our work expanded beyond what the notion of an African American was. That’s what I love most about this period and the expansiveness of us. Even ballroom culture was also involved. It’s like everything that we have today we touched on in that period.
Native Son: So we’re kind of in that same time period now—where it’s really dark. There are all these movements. It’s expansive. So why is this book perfect for today?
George M. Johnson: The book is perfect for today because when I think about Alaine Locke and The New Negro, it was the African American Bible. And so we’re almost a hundred years later now. And this was not planned in that way. But I was inspired to learn about these figures. To learn about Alaine and so many other people. Almost a hundred years later I’m putting something into the world that was put into the world a hundred years ago. It felt like my ancestors put this together. Alaine put together artists, speakers, orators, and writers. I’m grateful for the fact that not only did I have an understanding because was able read about so many of these people, but that a hundred years later I get to kind of re-share these people with the world.
Native Son: Your books focuse on educating young LGBTQ folks and normalizing their experiences, normalizing their existence. What do you want young people to learn from Flamboyance and the Harlem Renaissance?
George M. Johnson: Yes. The takeaway from Flamboyants and the Harlem Renaissance is: You’ve been here before. A person like you has existed before. A person like you has had to navigate this before. That was the ultimate premise. In the introduction chapter I talk about how my heroes were hidden from me, my heroes have been stolen from me. I grew up as a Black kid not knowing what queerness was, not fully understanding what it was, but there were people who also grew up like me and I should have been able to learn about them. They had some of the similar identity struggles that I had. And that’s what’s been most unfortunate. The fact that I grew up not knowing who Zora Neale Hurston was and Josephine Baker and Ma Rainey and Bessy Smith and Langston Hughes, the list goes on. The biggest piece is letting people know that people existed like you before you, who have fought this fight for you. So continue to fight the fight, but also know you have heroes who came before you, too.
Native Son: Who’s your favorite figure from the Harlem Renaissance and why?
George M. Johnson: Okay. Okay. Very, very good question. It is hard. It is between Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen. I feel like Langston Hughes would’ve been the Wendy Williams of our era. I’m screaming because he knew everybody and knew everybody’s business and that’s probably why he had fallouts with Lorraine Hansberry and everybody else. Because Langston Hughes knew the tea. The person I related to most was Countee Cullen. He was really the one with the biggest juxtaposition of his identity versus his societal stance. He married W.E.B. Du Bois’s daughter and was bisexual.
The fact of the matter is that he had the biggest Black wedding probably ever recorded—over 3000 people showed up. All of the Black intelligentsia showed up, but also all of the Black radicals. I think I was able to relate to him the most because I think that is the part of identity we struggle with, having to fit into multiple communities when we’re a leader. And he was leader—his poetry was amazing, his thinking was amazing, but also can we really be led by a single person?
And that is something that a hundred years later we still grapple with.
