BULL-JEAN & DEM/DEY BACK by Sharon Bridgforth
 
me/they call bull-dog-jean i say
that’s cause i works lik somekinda old dog trying to git a bone or two
they say it’s cause i be sniffing after wy’mns
down-low/begging and thangs
whatever.
- Sharon Bridgforth

bull-jean & dem/dey back collects two performance/novels centering Sharon Bridgforth’s southern-Black-butch-sheroe, bull-jean. First published by RedBone Press in 1998, the Lambda Literary Award-winning the bull-jean stories chronicles the course of lovve returning in the Life-times of bull-dog-jean. Set in the rural 1920s south, the bull-jean stories is an act of griot-anthropology, remembering the ancestor we never knew but always knew we needed--the raucous, sweet-talking, heart-aching wo’mn-lovvn-wo’mn bull-dog-jean and the fierce and beautiful community that surrounds her. Twenty-two years later, bull-dog-jean returns in bull-jean/we wake. Grieving the loss of their elders, seeking healing, the Narrator calls forward bull-jean. Through a series of dreams, porch prayers, and visitations from cussing conjurers, Black Mermaids, children that fly, and shape-shifting ole folk, bull-jean and dem guide the Narrator towards a realization of the sustaining power of love, memory, community, ritual and spiritual binding.
 
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