Book review of Flamboyants by George M. Johnson

George M. Johnson, who has spent their career thus far writing the books they wish they’d had when they were a teen (including the frequently challenged All Boys Aren’t Blue), has reached into history for more queer Black stories to share with Flamboyants: The Queer Harlem Renaissance I Wish I’d Known. “My heroes were hidden from me,” Johnson writes in the introduction to this nonfiction title. 

Across 12 essays featuring foundational figures like Langston Hughes, Josephine Baker and Zora Neale Hurston, as well as less broadly known icons like Alain Locke, Gladys Bentley and Ethel Waters, Johnson champions the untold queer stories that were integral and influential to  the  Harlem Renaissance. Interspersed with Johnson’s own poetry and rich, vibrant paintings by artist and illustrator Charly Palmer, Flamboyants is a nuanced yet accessible primer for both teens and adults. 

But Flamboyants is not merely a much-needed history lesson, and it’s certainly not standard biographical fare. Johnson puts these figures in conversation with each other and with the present, enrichingeach essay with personal anecdotes delivered in a witty, conversational tone, and with cultural criticism that draws a direct through line from the Harlem Renaissance to Black queer culture today.

Thanks to this focus, Johnson does not tell one-dimensional stories, like the ones they heard in their own childhood. Rather, Johnson allows the subjects of Flamboyants the full spectrum of their humanity, exploring what they did, what they didn’t do, and what was done to them. “These important figures,” Johnson writes, “deserve their legacy to be told in its totality.” In this way, Flamboyants suggests that we must see those who came before us as whole people to have any hope of making sense of our present.