Revolutionary Acts: Love & Brotherhood in Black Gay Britain (Hardback)

Okundaye gifts us a vibrant living history that has helped shape our cultural present and futures with tenderness, wit and warmth and a vigorous intellect and archival heft. The conversations are illuminating, heartbreaking, scandalous and galvanising. A crucial text not just of Black British history, but British history in itself.

From partial decriminalisation of sex between men, through the first Gay Pride marches, the nascent Aids crisis, Section 28 and media homophobia directed at Justin Fashanu, to the pleasure of archiving our physical presence, Black British queer activism has rarely been centre stage. The seven Black gay men of this radical oral history – all of whose stories interlink in Brixton – have continuously shown up for us, highlighting the nuances of race, class and desire that reverberate through every “progress” motion, while giving us juicy dialogue, tears and laughter, and vivid landscapes of memory. They are heroes, not just because they lived and survived and are great artists and activists, but because they deeply loved and cared for one another on a human level, and this seminal book hands them the flowers they deserve.

Jason Okundaye has done something extraordinary and made this work of vital social history seem like a late night, electrifying conversation between good friends. With a tender devotion to these stories, intellectual rigour and elegant writing, Revolutionary Acts does not merely preserve the past in stone but generously allows the reader to discover these lives as they were actually lived: thrilling and furious, sexy and scandalous.

Jason Okundaye has written a truly valuable book: a chatty, powerful and outrageous testament to a community of bold pioneers. As a document it’s important and insightful, and as a piece of storytelling it’s entertaining, lucid and compelling.

Jason has written into history stories and narratives that are often archived off of the page – with the same enticing and intimate feeling of these conversations. Black gay men’s history is something the UK ignores, which makes it tempting to stop at calling this book ‘important’ and ‘vital’, but what sung to me beyond the clear vitality within the words was its ability to make the history and lives of our subcultures so tantalising, alive, tender, playful and an addictive read. I can’t wait to tell everyone to read this book.

Through brilliant and dazzling research, and a humour that sparks off the page, Jason Okundaye has not only delivered a work rich with the vital, electric voices of his subjects, but one that makes the past feel more present, more real. Full of protest and insight, gossip and tenderness, Revolutionary Acts is a book pulsing with the rhythm of the club and the honesty of intimate conversation. It doesn't just recover and expand queer British history: it shocks it back to life.