Bull-Jean & Dem/Dey Back

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.

About the Author
Sharon
Bridgforth is
a writer who creates ritual/jazz theatre. A 2022 Winner of Yale's Windham Campbell Prize in Drama, Sharon is a 2020-2023 Playwrights' Center Core Member, a
2022-2023 McKnight Fellow, a New Dramatists alum, and has received support from
The Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, Creative Capital, MAP Fund and the
National Performance Network. Widely published, her work is featured in Teaching
Black: The Craft of Teaching on Black Life and Literature and Mouths of Rain: An Anthology of Black
Lesbian Thought. Sharon's Lambda Literary
Award-winning, the bull-jean stories will be produced by Pillsbury House + Theatre in
October/November 2022, directed by Signe Harriday. Sharon is Executive Producer
and Host of the Who Yo People Is podcast series and her dat
Black Mermaid Man Lady/The Show is streaming on the Twin Cities PBS
platform.