Cheryl Dunye's The Watermelon Woman And Black Is Blue

Cheryl Dunye, a screenwriter, film director and actress, has created many films that fit under the genre of new queer cinema. Most of her films explores the intersections of sexuality, race and class and how it shapes black women's sexual identity. Cheryl presents the intersectionality theory in her films to uncover the social inequality that black lesbian face in society. This is important because they are doubly discriminated against for being a minority of colour, a homosexual person and of the lower class (Kumashiro, 2001). In particular, Cheryl's the The Watermelon Woman (1997) and Black is Blue (2014) will be discussed.

The Watermelon Woman tells a story of black lesbian (Cheryl) who experience many social struggles to complete a documentary on a black actress of the 1930s and 40s—mammy. Cheryl examines the interplay of race, gender, sexuality and class by making a connection between the norms of the past as well as the present. Meaning, she makes a connection between the mammy figure and black women of the 21century, whose identity have been built around Hollywood's racial stereotypes of black women. For example, there is a scene where Cheryl wears a mammy look-alike handkerchief, while lip syncing to mammy lines from Plantation Memories, then she takes it off

From my perspective, Black hasn't dealt with his past nor does he confronts his sexual identity. As a result, he suffers from internal conflicts. Again, we see the intersections of race, sexuality and class as Cheryl explored what life is like for a person transitioning. It's obvious that a black person will experience double discrimination because of his/her colour, the fact he/she is not only gay but transgender and is at the bottom of society. Because of these intersections, Black was subjugated to social and economic