"None Like Us begins as an intervention into black studies. To accomplish this, it turns to works of art and invention by people whom history has needed to be black. But as it unravels any claim to genre, discipline, field, identity, or audience, the book issues a broad invitation to the reader to see black studies and queer theory, black and queer life, not as identities to inhabit, but as critical perspectives on history and on a present tense that has been so scarred by various melodramas of the self—of its defense, self-possession, and propriety—that have played themselves out on both sides of anti-racist critique." — Kris Cohen, Public Books
"Compelling. . . Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty." — C. E. Bender, Choice
"Best’s ambitious and well-reasoned thesis confronts the challenge of thinking like a work of art but also of thinking the work of art as an object of critical studies, particularly in Black Studies. ... Responsibly argued and impressively confessional, Best o?ers thoughtful ways of recon?guring Black Studies." — Alice Mikail Craven, Modern Language Review
“Stephen Best's ambitious new book makes a valuable contribution to current debates at the intersection of literary and historical studies and provides nothing less than an aesthetic reappraisal of the aims and methods of black historiography. Erudite, searching, and eclectic, the intervention of None Like Us will reverberate widely across the field of black studies for years to come.” — Tavia Nyong’o, author of Afro-Fabulations: The Queer Drama of Black Life
“Stephen Best gives us an entirely new way of understanding the constitution of black subjectivity. Identifying cognates for that process in the aesthetic strategies of numerous exemplary literary and visual artworks, he allows us to see black subjectivity itself as an aesthetic function, wholly distinct from the problematic collectivisms conventionally taken to originate in slavery. Deeply learned and beautifully written, None Like Us will provoke lively discussion among black studies scholars, significantly reorienting the theoretical conversation.” — Phillip Brian Harper, author of Abstractionist Aesthetics: Artistic Form and Social Critique in African American Culture