In The Only Way Out, Katherine Brewer Ball explores the American fascination with the escape story. Brewer Ball argues that escape is a key site for exploring American conceptions of freedom and constraint. Stories of escape are never told just once but become mythic in their episodic iterations, revealing the fantasies and desires of society, the storyteller, and the listener. While white escape narratives have typically been laden with Enlightenment fantasies of redemption where freedom is available to any individual willing to seize it, Brewer Ball explores how Black and queer escape offer forms of radical possibility. Drawing on Black studies, queer theory, and performance studies, she examines a range of works, from nineteenth-century American literature to contemporary queer of color art and writing by contemporary American artists including Wilmer Wilson IV, Tourmaline, Tony Kushner, Junot Díaz, Glenn Ligon, Toshi Reagon, and Sharon Hayes. Throughout, escape emerges as a story not of individuality but of collectivity and entanglement.

Katherine Brewer Ball is Assistant Professor of Theater at Wesleyan University.

Acknowledgments  vii
Escape is Such a Thankful Word: An Introduction  1
1. The Repetitions of Henry “Box” Brown  31
2. Feeling Out of This World: That’s What I Guess These Stories Are About  67
3. The Optics of Escape: Patty Hearst through the Mouth of Sharon Hayes  96
4. This Face Is Not for Us: Grounding Pleasure  129
Coda: Less of a Theater Audience  157
Notes  169
Bibliography  187
Index  201