Fierce love and Fierce response: intervening in the cultural politics of race, sexuality, and AIDS.

In their performances of Fierce Love, the Pomo Afro Homos (Postmodern African American Homosexuals) enact some of the experiences of black gay men. Through performance, the trio intervenes in the prevailing mythologies around black and gay identities, but especially black gay identities, in the age of AIDS. This essay begins by examining two dominant productions in recent U.S. culture that display and proliferate anxieties about black gay bodies: John Guare's play Six Degrees of Separation and Magic Johnson's unsettling HIV disclosure. The Pomo Afro Homos address the phenomenon of containing black gay sexuality by insisting that the theatre and its inherent role in offering representations be seen as a viable site for contestation for black gay men.