Jerry
Flack has taken on the awesome task of rendering a review of a huge
anthology...a significant work titled Freedom In This Village: Twenty-Five Years of Black Gay Men’s Writing, 1979 to the Present
edited by E. Lynn Harris
Freedom
In This Village: Twenty-Five Years of Black Gay Men’s Writing, 1979
to the Presented. E. Lynn Harris
Paperback 352 pages, $15.95
Carroll & Graf/Avalon 2005
ISBN: 0786713879
The year 1998 brought to national (and world) attention two of the most horrific murders of individuals in recent collective memory. In June 1998, a disabled forty-nine year-old black man, James Byrd, Jr., was chained to a pickup truck by three white men in Jasper County, Texas and dragged three miles to his death. By the time the murderers stopped to deposit Byrd’s body in a black cemetery, his head had been severed from his body.
In October of the same year, Matthew Shepard was brutally beaten, crucified on a split-rail fence, and left for dead in Wyoming.
Across the nation civilized people were sickened by these two particularly stomach-turning crimes, but enormous fear, grief and anger surfaced particularly among blacks and GLBT populations. Both blacks and gays held vigils and memorials services in churches and on the steps of state and federal buildings across the nation following each death.
Readers who are gay felt the attack on Matthew Shepard was a violation of their own persons. This author cannot speak for blacks, but almost certainly African Americans felt just as deeply that the vicious and senseless murder of James Byrd, Jr. was an attack upon themselves and an all-too frightening return to the days of lynching in the American South.
Now, readers, ask yourself, if you are white and cried for Matthew Shepard’s terrible death and felt the hurricane-force emotional impact of his brutal murder, or if you are black or members of any other minority and likewise felt the terror and horror of James Byrd Jr.’s vicious murder, imagine for a moment the exponential mixture of grief, hatred, fear and loathing men who found themselves represented in BOTH groups of which these two tragic men were a part. How must it have felt to be to be both black and gay in the summer and autumn of 1998 in the USA? Some of the fear, anguish, horror, and yet fearsome pride of black gay male writers, both before and since 1998, are found at least indirectly, in Freedom In This Village: Twenty-Five Years of Black Gay Men’s Writing, 1979 to the Present.
In his heartfelt, highly informative, and eloquently written introduction, prolific author and editor E. Lynn Harris charts almost a century of gay black writing beginning in the Harlem Renaissance with such closeted black authors as Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes, but saves his particular praise for Joseph Beam who nearly a quarter century past revolutionized literature in the United States by publishing the first-ever collection of exclusively black gay male writings, In the Life: A Black Gay Anthology (1986). For the first time, writers of the stature of Beam himself as well as Essex Hemphill, Melvin Dixon, and Assotto Saint were not only talented writers but proud black gay men unashamed to shout loudly and proudly both their racial and sexual identity. Even so, at the time, far more attention was being paid to white gay males writers such as Andrew Holleran, Larry Kramer, and Edmund White.
Prior to the publication of Beam’s landmark anthology of the radiant writings of black gay men, few people outside his immediate community of authors even recognized that such a significant body of black gay male literature existed. However, just as Beam’s In the Life was becoming a celebration of black gay male pride, this same population of writers was especially hard hit by the AIDS epidemic. Beam himself succumbed to AIDS in 1988, Dixon in 1992, Saint in 1995, and Hemphill in 1995. Countless other brilliant black, gay voices were also stilled by AIDS.
The tragedy of these men’s death went beyond their mortality, as Harris points out. Not only were their voices silenced by the epidemic of AIDS, editors and publishers allowed their work to go out of print, including Beam’s classic, In the Life. Therefore, Harris attempts to achieve two important objectives with Freedom In This Village. First, by beginning his anthology of great black gay writing 25 years in the past he is able to introduce today’s younger readers to the brilliant black gay male voices of the past, while simultaneously boosting an entirely new generation of superb writers — today’s black gay writers — by giving many of them their first public audience. To the point, Harris equally balances tributes to the tragic past history of black gay male forebears and their writing while simultaneously introducing every reader regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation to the genius of contemporary writers such as Brian Keith Jackson, James Earl Hardy, and Tim’m West, who are carrying on the great literary lineage and artistic traditions of those who went before them, men they perhaps even themselves did not know ever existed.
In all, Harris places the writings of more than 40 poets, short story writers, playwrights, novelists, and essayists, all black gay men in an anthology that is extremely rich in both the over-all quality of the writing, the history lessons provided (intentionally or otherwise) in stunning examples of prose and poetry, fiction and nonfiction. In addition to the superb examples of virtually every literary genre (including a transcribed debate between black gay men on the subject of political power) and remarkably diverse writers’ life experiences, Harris provides brief but highly enlightening profiles of all the writers whose works are represented in this anthology.
The 47 works represent both prose and poetry and fiction and nonfiction and the works encompass an odyssey of twenty-five years of outstanding writing exclusively by black gay males, beginning with an excerpt from James Baldwin’s final novel Just Above My Head (1979) to Harris’ own fiction, “What I Did For Love” (2004), an exploration of computer dating among black gay men. Some of the names such as Baldwin, Essex Hemphill, Joseph Beam, and the editor himself, E. Lynn Harris, are names well recognized. Other authors appear in print for the first time and demonstrate that despite the ravages of time and AIDS to the black gay men’s writing community, there is a remarkably rich collection of black gay men’s voices just awaiting exposure and appreciation.
Other than Baldwin, Harris is most likely the most famous and successful black gay writer represented in the collection. E. Lynn Harris was born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas with three older sisters, a kind mother, but an abusive stepfather. He graduated from the University of Arkansas where he was the college’s first black cheerleader, and later worked in Texas selling computers for IBM for thirteen years before he took a leave of absence and stayed with an Atlanta friend while he wrote his first novel, Invisible Life (ultimately, Doubleday, 1994). No publisher would touch the book, so he invested $25,000 of his own money to self-publish his work and in the process became not only the author and publisher, but the distributor, accountant, delivery man and inventory control manager of his own enterprise. One thing this first time entrepreneurial black gay businessman could not afford – nor even knew about – was having a literary agent. The prime theme of Harris’ own writing is people overcoming the obstacles of life no matter what or how difficult they may be. He believes in miracles. His own personal rubric succeeded when a representative from Doubleday Publishing happened upon his novel, called him, and asked him who his agent was. He did not have one. The Doubleday reader, who turned out to be one of the biggest names in publishing, referred him to the Hawkins’ Agency that represented the authors and/or estates of Alex Haley, Richard Wright and Joyce Carol Oates. Overnight, Harris was on his way, and since that fairy tale-like beginning, he has had four novels such as And This Too Shall Pass (Doubleday, 1999) and a memoir, What Becomes of the Brokenhearted? (Doubleday, 2003) that have rocketed their way into the elite company of New York Times bestsellers. All together, more than three million copies of his books are in print. Ebony magazine named Harris one of the fifty-five “Most Intriguing African Americans” and he has twice won the James Baldwin Award for Literary Excellence for his writing. His novels, primarily centered upon black gay urban success stories are not just popular with African-American audiences, but have also made Harris a popular crossover writer to broader and larger audiences of considerable diversity. He also belongs to the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame.
Harris leaves no doubt that a great deal of his spiritual guidance was found in the brilliant works of AIDS victim Essex Hemphill. Indeed, the title of the book comes from an exquisite poem from Jim Beam’s monumental anthology In This Life. Hemphill’s begins and ends with this elegant yet earthy verse in which a black gay male attempts to convince his mother of the glory of his black gay maleness.
Mother, do you know
I roam alone at night
I wear colognes,
tight pants, and
chains of gold,
as I search
for men willing
to come back to candlelight.
If one of the thick-lipped,
wet, black nights
while I’m out walking,
I find freedom in this Village.
If I can take it with my tribe
I’ll bring you here.
And you will never notice
the absence of rice
and bridesmaids.
Not only overcoming seemingly impossible obstacles, but having great pride in one’s blackness and gayness is the incontrovertible theme of every one of the works Harris celebrates in Freedom In This Village.
The diversity of the entries in Freedom In This Village is remarkable. Every poem seems an ode to black gay maleness and black gay pride, yet each is a distinctive and astonishing voice whether speaking from anger, love, heat, pride, or grief. Again, Essex Hemphill’s brilliant verse “The Tomb of Sorrow” is an elegy to misplaced love and trust. “Aunt Ida Pieces a Quilt” (1989) by Melvin Dixon is a powerful story of how a black family of many generations gathers together to piece together a memorial quilt for The Names Project for a fallen brother, son, and grandson.
In both prose and poetry, black gay writers celebrate themselves. The storied recollection, “Passion” (1981) by Sidney Brinkley, is erotic writing so fine, true, beautiful and passionate that it takes the art of making love to an all-together new realm of the senses; it is achingly beautiful testimony.
Heart breaking just as it is simultaneously heart lifting is the experience of reading Vega’s brief poem, “Brothers Loving Brothers” (1989), an equally sweeping statement in the pride and the grandeur of black gay male love.
Respect yourself, my brother,
for we are so many wondrous things.
Like a black rose,
you are a rarity to be found.
our leaves intertwine as I reach out to you
after the release of gentle rain. (p. 107)
At the complete opposite end of the spectrum architect Gil Gerald pens a lengthy essay that more nearly represents a memorandum of the “The Trouble I’ve Seen” (1987), while he describes in great detail the political, social, and racial machinations within the larger black community to keep the black GLBT population still segregated and marginalized. Gerald describes in forlorn words how the majority African-American community attempted to keep GLBT marchers from participating in the 20th Anniversary Celebration March on Washington, D.C. to commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and of how these same leaders attempted to prevent even the great voice of Audre Lorde from being heard on that commemorative day of supposed racial harmony, pride, and unity.
The most fiercely penned essay is Reginald Shepherd’s erudite rumination, “On Not Being White (1986). Shepherd takes readers on a personal odyssey of both intra-racial and inter-racial relations in the black and gay and black and majority cultures in the past two decades. It represents historical writing at its finest.
One of the most difficult parts of reading Freedom In This Village is the intense grief readers experience and the dismay at the virtually inconceivable loss of so many wonderful voices due to the ravages of AIDS. Yet even the victims of that terrible affliction make no apologies for their lives as evidenced by the heroic voice of writers such as David Frechette, who died of AIDS in 1991. Prior to his own death, he gave powerful testimony to his black gay male pride in his poem, “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” (1989):
My only regrets are being ill,
Bed-ridden and having no boyfriend
To pray over me.
And that now I’ll never see Europe
Or my African homeland except
In photos in a book or magazine.
Engrave on my tombstone:
“Here sleeps a happy Black faggot
Who lived to love and died
With no guilt.
No, I regret nothing
Of the gay life I’ve led and
There’s no way in Heaven or Hell
I’ll let anyone make me. (pp. 110-111)
While much of the writing, regardless of genre, is urban and exclusively black and gay, one of the most touching and powerful stories is rural, Southern and about bi-racial gay love. In Randall Keenan’s “The Foundations of the Earth,” the central character is a wealthy and prominent black woman in the deep South. Because of her shrewd but unfaithful husband’s business acumen, Mrs. Maggie MacGowan Williams has been left an elegant home, a noble position in the church and community, and great parcels of land and that she ironically leases to a white share cropper who of necessity must not only lease land from a black woman, but work on Sundays to support his own family. While much of life has gone right for the righteous Mrs. Maggie MacGowan Williams, the “monkey on her back” has been first the isolation of her grandbaby Edward and then his untimely death at the age of twenty-seven in a car accident. Why did he never come home from Boston to see her? Why did he only make occasional, short and cryptic phone calls and send her Christmas and birthday cards? When her beloved Edward dies so suddenly and without having seen her in so many years, she experiences immense grief that turns to horror when her granddaughter tells her “Edward’s been living with another man all these years ….like a man and wife.” (p. 167) At Edward’s funeral, the family lines up to receive the guests and as the white lover stands there alone, “this tall, raven-haired, pink-skinned, abject, eyes bloodshot – she experienced a bevy of conflicting emotions: disgust, grief, anger, tenderness, fear, weariness. Nevertheless, she had to be civil.” (p. 170)
Later, the monkey of her grandbaby’s life and death still on her back, and a tired woman who has lived almost too long a life, absorbed too much hurt and betrayal and sadness, Mrs. Maggie MacGowan Williams comes to a critical decision. She calls Edward’s white lover Gabriel and invites him to come to the South to spend a weekend with her. Only he could give her the answers she needed.
On the same Sunday afternoon of Gabriel’s visit to her home, the community, and her church, the Right Reverend Hezekiah Borden and other proper black ladies of the community, all of whom she has come to perceive as self-important fools, come to visit. They are appalled that she is allowing a white sharecropper farmer to plow furrows in her fields on a Sunday, God’s day of rest. Such an action is a direct affront to God, and by extension, Maggie is placing her own soul in peril by allowing her land to be used in such a transgression.
Weary and tired of life, and left alone on the porch with only her white visitor Gabriel…her grandson Edward’s “widower,” she motions for Gabriel to come with her and help mediate the confrontation between the Reverend Hezekiah Borden, the proper black church women, and the beleaguered white farmer.
After a limited accord has been achieved, a modicum of harmony has been restored, and her guests have been dispersed, Maggie for the first time feels an unexpected calmness with Gabriel and proceeds to ask him the question that only he alone can answer. Why did Edward never tell her he was gay? “He was afraid, Mrs. W. It’s just that simple. That you might disown him.” (p. 173)
The revelation stuns Maggie. “How curious the world had become that she would be asking a white man to exonerate her in the eyes on her own grandson; how strange that at seventy, when she had all the laws and rules down pat, she would have to begin again, to learn.” (p. 180)
“The Foundations of the Earth,” is like so many writings found in Freedom In This Village. It resonates long after the final words of the story are read. Like all good literature, it begs to be read again and still again so as not to miss a solitary nuance, any point of meaning, or a single beautiful and extraordinary word or phrase.
Although of necessity, Harris limits his tome to the writings of gay black male writers because of the focus he has chosen, it is imperative for all GLBT persons to join in support of this extraordinary work. Regardless of where one stands in the diversity spectrum across racial and ethnic lines and within the GLBT community, this is a critical anthology to own. It affirms a significant group of our tribe: black gay men who are writers. It helps those who are not black and gay understand what it means to be both. Moreover, it is a collection of writings that ranges from extraordinarily informative and insightful essays to lyrical poetry and remarkably humane and luminously written stories and novel excerpts. Freedom In This Village stands tall as a model collection of writing and as a standard bearer to others in the GLBT family that similar anthologies are desperately needed in the whole broad spectrum of literature. When will GLBT readers and hopefully an even larger audience have a comparable opportunity to hear the voices (and from the hearts) of Asian Lesbians or Muslim gay and bisexual men? Finally, ownership of Freedom In This Village is a way for those who are not black gay men to communicate to these writers that they are family, to bless them for sharing their lives and shouting proudly to them: “You are magnificent writers, you are supported, and you are loved as members of the family.”
Jerry Flack
Denver, Colorado