Summary Of Honey Honey Miss Thang

As we have previously discussed language acts both as a tool and an obstacle for people who live queer lifestyles, even more so for those who live in the intersection of racial and sexual oppression. In Leon E. Pettiway's book honey, honey, Miss Thang: Being Black, gay, and on the streets, he explores the lives of five individuals through a unique narrative choice which highlights how language can alter and inform our understanding of the world, and each other. I hope to illustrate how language shapes identity and our understanding as readers, of the individual histories provided. Through this paper I will use the singular they to refer to the individuals whose life stories Pettiway presents to the audience. In todays queer vernacular, being gay and being trans*gender are mutually exclusive
Accounting for the time period when this book was written and published is vital. The author held his interviews in the eighties and the final product was published in the late nineties when trans*gender was not a common term, therefore the conflation of gender and sexual orientations is understandable. Nevertheless, we are a modern audience and we hold a different mindset, which makes their stories somewhat difficult to understand. China, discusses that they play the "women role in the relationship" and they said, "I can't help but think like a woman (Pettiway 1996; 90-91). China equates their behavior as female, but does not assert a female identity illustrating how language fails to help them present an accurate telling of their situation. While it is possible that China identifies as male but effeminate the language available for their narrative makes this possibility hard to express. For example, China is left without an identifier that allows them to express living outside the binary. Second, during my reading the language China uses