the young people's professor

Awesome post, you eloquently expressed the sentiment of many hold to be true. We, young same gender loving people, need and desire socio-cultural references that we can draw, and learn from. But the issue with it is honestly, to do so means that there has to a dramatic shift in the current paradigm that we inhabit. This paradigm, not only due to our sexual orientation but also because of the generation we live in, is one that popular culture of the time is put on the pedestal, and the only time history is relevant is when it can be capitalized on it for immediate gain a remake of a movie, a book to be made into a play, or a song to be remade to fit our current sensibilities. History otherwise for many people is looked as to something that has yes shaped our current condition, but not something that we can actually learn from to improve our circumstance. To combat this you, or anyone who is really serious about being a paradigm shift would have to actively create a network where one can take the socio-cultural past and not present them in a way that makes them relevant and accessible to the masses who need to know but are ignorant of both their need and its very existence. Think about it, how comforting would it be for people to know that issues such as, African-American masculinity, Homosexuality in the Church, Finding love, Men who do not identify as gay but have sex with other men (DL), Transgender issues, are all issues that people our age in the 80’s, 70’s, 60’s, 50’s, and all the way back to the turn of the century, and to learn ways that others coped with it in various circumstances. But the real question is who will make it accessible to the very population that needs it desperately?

Just my thoughts.

You pose some very interesting questions, concerns and ideas around the black gay generation that you're part of and it's connection to that and those who've come before.

I don't believe your generation is really that much different from previous generations, in that most of youth is concerned with today; the here, the now. It's exaserbated by the media, mtv, internet access, cell phones, side-kicks and such.

The loosening of family ties and generational networks also contributes to that loss of "sense of history": and it's not just black gay history.

When everything coming at you is NOW! NOW! NOW! and ME! ME! ME, historical acts and feats and milestones are sheparded to the last seat in the last row on the last bus.

And too, young gay men of color have a lot more to contend with just getting through the day. Or so it seems.

But your generation will be known, in hindsight, for being one of the first generations to live with and survive the HIV crisis, to live openly (in many places) as gay, or transgendered, or bisexual or by any label you chose. These are two very big steps that neither Countee Cullen nor James Baldwin could have imagined in their respective generations.

Lastly, I think there's you and some of your cohorts who are cataloging this generation and its achievements, posing questions, challenging ideas and, coming up with new ones that historically may be worth remembering.

So good luck to you and pace yourself; there's a lot to do.

I have been wanting to commend you for some time now, but was hesitant for fear of sounding cheesy or sappy, or creepy even. And the fact that everyone who logs on to your site can read my post does not help either.But, with my pride put aside, I deeply feel the need to let you know how appreciative I am for your existence. You are a godsend! I have felt a strong connection to you ever since my introduction to your blog, which prompted from my introduction your posts made on walk4mewednesday.com (which I discovered just trying to buy a ball tape on balldvd.com). Ironically, with reading your views and opinions on the aforementioned site(s) you changed my views on the ballroom scene and alternately my views on some other real life personal shit that I am going. That is why I call you a godsend. They say, "you never know whose watching/listening to you" (in your case reading, lol), and you never know how God can and will use you. He used you to give me inspiration and hope about alot of issues.
You ask who will lead us into the future by making a statement in the present? You are! You are the future of Gay America. Keep up the good work.

Wiseyoungman and Allen Gallery make excellent points. I think a key issue to point out in terms of Black queer cultural transmission and its absence is the HIV/AIDS pandemic. As Allen Gallery (C) points out, the loss of several generations—and I'm thinking for example of the one that preceded my own (men and women who'd be in their mid-40s to mid-50s), as well as many of my peers (early 40s to mid 30s), from HIV/AIDS especially, but also cancer and other illnesses, has left a void that will never be filled. When I was in my 20s, James Baldwin, Essex, Marlon, Joseph Beam, Audre Lorde, Pat Parker, and others were all still alive and writing; in fact, people in my peer group, as did I, met, read, and interacted directly with many of these figures. AIDS's deleterious effects, particularly for queer people and especially for Black queer people in the 15 years after 1980, were and must always be remembered as exceptional. I can remember Other Countries performing in Boston (this would have been before 1993), and both Marlon and Essex, who were still alive, being there. Only a couple years later, primarily because of aids later many of these folks were no longer with us. The situation is quite different today, since most of these folks are no longer alive and exist mainly as historical figures and cultural ancestors. Without any mechanisms to keep them in the forefront or even background of subsequent generations'--and I'd add contemporary--Black queer consciousness, they tend to be forgotten or overlooked.

There are are number of important Black queer artists who were creating and publicly active during the era you mention, and who're still alive and still creating: in addition to Isaac, of course, what about Samuel R. Delany, Randall Kenan, Cyrus Cassells, Cheryl Clarke, Jewelle Gomez, Jackie Woodson, Shari Frilot, Thomas Glave, Thomas Allen Harris, Lyle Harris? (And their scholarly peers could also be invoked.) They and others who represent direct artistic/aesthetic/critical links to many of the people and works you're citing. They may be less well known or not so easily positioned within certain highly publicized critical frameworks, but all are significant figures in Black queer/LGBT cultural production, and their work extends into the present day. Some of them are in conversation, as teachers, friends, mentors, and so on, with members of your generation, and this also may not be as well known.

Another issue is perspective. It may take the perspective of retrospection--and the right scribes, popular and scholarly--to capture and historicize the particular kinds of cultural products your generation is creating. I hear you and wiseyoungman when he critiques the current paradigms, which may be inimical to some of the creative forms from prior generations, but this is always the case. I would also add that the generation of the 1980s and early 1990s--the pre-HIV cocktail generation is one way of demarcating it—arose out of two important cultural moments, and functioned within two others (to simplify). First, the gay liberation movement of the late 1960s and 1970s, and the Black Power and Civil Rights movements of the same era created the contexts in which many of the works you cite are situated—the overt invocations and constructions of sexual and racial identity, and the critiques of homophobia, misogyny, and racism with the aim of liberation and the creation of new kinds and forms of community—liberation politics are key—come out of what had preceded these works just a few years before. At the same time, the fierceness of polemic in part resulted from the rise of a popular state conservatism (Thatcher in Britain, Reagan in the US) and the specter of HIV/AIDS, which literally raised the stakes for all of the people you mention (as well as everyone else).

As Allen Gallery says, you are part of a generation in which queerness has become ever more societally normalized and mainstreamed; it was very different in the 1980s and the 1990s (or before). So necessarily your perspective, and your forms of performance and production are going to differ, and while some of the central elements of that earlier work will not apply, others elements—the critiques of racism, ethnocentrism, homophobia and heternormativism, classism, serostatus (to some degree)--still do. The societal changes, in particular the mainstream of gay/queer culture and even the normalization of HIV/AIDS, that have occurred cannot be underestimated. Whereas once PWAs were literally treated as social pariahs, nowadays millions of people not only live with HIV/AIDS but do so openly; coming out as a PWA was a major political and social act not so long ago. As I need not tell you, many of the questions these figures and others have raised about community, race-gender-sexuality, identity, subjectivity, and the role and effects of private and public politics, among other things, persist. As Allen Gallery says, we're in a social moment, a zeitgeist, of profound anti-intellectualism, immediate gratification, continuous immediacy, and panoptic commercialism and commodification; this was true to some extent of earlier eras too, of the 1980s, but in differing ways. The idea of the public, to take one example, has changed dramatically. Yet conditions, the bases from which we proceed, have changed. This is one of the ironies of history, and I would suggest that it presents unique challenges that I know you're up to the task of tackling.

There is the additional point that artists today may be creating things and aren't receiving public notice for it. I can think of a handful of very talented 20-something and 30-something Black queer artists who're working outside the populist paradigms you mention. Maybe they'll come to wider public attention (I hope they will), but maybe not. The question is, who will write them into the historical record? Will they have to do so themselves? Perhaps it's already happening...and you or I don't know about it. But this is always the case when functioning within the frame of the present. You may not know until (much) later.

I'll add that while Melvin Dixon was in close contact with a number of Black queer writers, out and closeted, and queer-philic artists like Elizabeth Alexander, I can assure that there were (and are) many Black queer folks I knew in the 1980s who had no idea who he was, nor were they conversant with his creative works, let alone his scholarly ones. Not only did he write novels and poetry--and he actually better known and more acclaimed as a poet for much of his adulthood--, but he was also an important figure in African Diasporic transcultural exchange, translating Léopold Sedar Senghor (his translation is still the authorative one) and connecting an array of fellow scholars and writers. How do we keep the multifaceted history and stories of someone like Melvin alive? He is just one person.

And this returns us to one of wiseyoungman's points, which is relevance. How does one make relevant and appealing the kinds of knowledge and cultural production that may benefit the very people who are ignorant of it? Who exists to provide context about works that most people in your generation don't know about, contexts that may require explanation? How do we bring people to these works outside academe, which has its own (deforming?) effect? How do we resituate the idea of "privilege," at least in this context, as something not to be thrown out as an epithet, which in any case is reactionary and self-limiting? Perhaps some will create public venues and forums--magazines, websites, etc.,--that facilitate these sorts of connections.

Peace, John

First thing, I really love this post and the new look of your page and direction, great job! Now, it seems that you have a strong desire to revolutionize gay culture. On the other hand, it seems as though your dissatisfaction comes when you are overwhelmed with a deep sense of nostalgia while reading and writing; but is disappointed when there is not a connection between now and then. Would I be incorrect in assuming that you are initiating a call for a return to our gay past? If so, what about your influence, toward that end, with Flava magazine (and other related affairs) to start the change (or revolution) you desire?

Point well-taken but i disagree, somewhat. Your rhetoric is what you say it's not - academic and privileged. To ask young black gay men to be intimately aware of these past luminaries is to ask them to first acquire decent reading skills, then find enough time (and money) to spend 4+ yrs studying at an elite insitutions. Ideal but unrealistic.

MLK found solutions for the present by interpreting history in present language and forging near-tangible links between that history and his time. Malcolm X did an even better job (but that's another story). It worked. People got IT.

Marlon's work is cute. Essex's is even cuter. I have read and LOVE their work. Yet, I find them less relevant to black queerness than the young queer people I meet in the streets of New York, Paris, London, Lagos, Quito, Brazil and at Luke and Leroys.

Besides, it's not a black gay thing per se - it's a generational thing. I am yet to see anything interesting from my generation - we aren't experienced enough to produce anything worthy of memory.

(ps - look what happened to Marlon and Essex. I wouldn't make them my role models.)

Thank you all for helping me continue this dialogue. I am moved. John, I wanted to respond to some of your insights first. Yes,sure my post was nostalgic and romantic—this was a conscious choice on my behalf. However, I really hope that my words and visions here are not being interpreted as sheer light-weight, bubble-gum dreams. When I wrote this post yesterday morning (after literally dreaming about Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston), I started to think and reflect a lot about the critical potential of nostalgia. Indeed, the language that I chose to use in my post as well as the wacky, dreamy connections I made between Luke & Leroys and Niggerati Manor, etc. was really as a way of trying to set forth a more self-conscious dialogic exchange between our "now" and "then." I think this is line with what South Asian feminist scholar Gayatri Gopinath has called an “enabling nostalgia”: a nostalgia that motivates, moves, and inspires. This is what I was going for.

Surely I’m very familiar with the critical cadre of black gay voices (that you have mentioned) in the age of AIDS that received even less attention than what Riggs and his co-hort did. I also think im pretty familiar with this generation as well, including, and perhaps especially, all the folks that dont "get life". My references to the specific figures I mentioned was not meant to ignore or forget other voices from this generation, nor did it come from my lack of awareness of us them.

I think what I really was trying to get at is that in terms of “popular” black gay print culture today (and here I am primary referring to the recent explosion or urban black SGL magazines rather than journals, zines, and chap-books, though we also need to think about them too), there is a lot missing in terms of their articulation a conscious vision of political mobilization and community building. Also, though so much of the most critically enabling moments of black queer cultural production have come—and continue to come—from the epistemological influences of women of color feminism (black feminism in particular), I see even less of these connections being made by black gay men nowadays then ever. And so here again, I’m calling for a “return” that isn’t simply a naïve, cliché, recovery of a loss past, but rather a search for a “usable past”, a critical reflection of current being through the lens of previous moments in our histories. That’s was trying to get at.

Awesome point. When I first came out(if only to myself)I looked for books and people I could relate to myself. My other gay friends were into the ballroom scene and little else invloving "gay culture". It was pointed out to me that white gay culture is very different from black gay culture. This was no more than seven short years ago but even then, we weren't seeing media images portraying us like we do today. It was a search many of my peers didn't bother to make. If you did you could find books by black authors about the queer experience but little to none relating the two.
Things change though. Today we have several new books, book clubs, magazines, internet magazines, blogs, anthologies and even a television show to relate to. We can find images of ourselves and people to relate to. What's fresh and new gets attention. And that's what were exposed to. It's the nature of our culture overall. I found it odd that several young SGL men didn't know of pioneers whose works debuted before the 90's, but I understand it. I mean the Harlem Renaissance sounded like a fun ole' time but it's still not exactly easy for everyone to relate to today.
Also, I'm kinda sick of the whole "hot boy" sell for stuff concerning SGL men. I likes a good masculine man but that whole image is late to me. Tradionally, it's feminine gay men who represented what people knew as gay. Why can't we blend as just "gay men"? And why is it the more femme gay black men who buy into this image so much?

In my University, I often remind my colleagues that the homosexual culture is deviate and should never be supported or amalgamated to mainstream society.

What can the homosexual culture do for wider society? What benefit can the fify year old white lady benefit from learning or knowing anything about homosexuals? Absolutely nothing valuable.

Thanks for the knowledge Frank. It's always good to remember.

A truly fascinating post. In so many ways you have dared to say what many do not want to hear. The historical dimension is terribly important. Why? Simply, because gay White men can lay claim to a history and thus ligetimise their identity. Significant writers, like Hemphill, who had the wisdom to link with feminist politics, fought to provide the next generation of Black gay men with a history and identity marked by time. I look at the role call (and I am White by the way) and observe an obvious trend. Fani-Kayode is a better photographer than Mapplethorpe. Basquiat is a more significant artist than Warhol. Yet this fact is being happily eroded by patriarchy...with political consequences. Why did Hemphill and Saint have to privately publish their works? Because White culture woud not give exposure and preferred erasure. Hemphill is a significant gay Black voice: he is also a significant poet regardless of race and gender. Not so long ago, Isaac Julien was nominated for the Turner Prize. Nominees were attacked that year for a lack of intellectual depth (by Black critics!) Isaac Julien...without intellect? Quite the opposite. And that touches upon another prejudice raised by the comments. You are accused of being a privileged Black male who has nothing in common with the urban Black male, so all you advocate is an intellectual nostalgia for the past which is not as real as gay life on the streets. Intelligence has become a hated word as the gap between the educated and the uneducated grows. The problem is still that of the Harlem Renaissance as Hughes put it. All the high intellectual talk did not improve Black folks life very much. Your position is not irrelevant...it is vital. As bell hooks pointed out with regards to Basquiat (one of the few decent intellectual works ever written abut him) people know the biography of B, how much his painting costs, but few actually come to his work to feel. By disowning the intellectual past, individuals surrender whole vistas of feeling. "What can the homosexual culture offer to society?" That question is redundant. It already has offered a massive amount. You do not strike me as a "nostalgic" critic, rather as someone who has seen where the future must go. What did Hemphill suggest: "Now we think as we fuck". If only! Forgetting must not happen. You are right to talk about "fluidity" and critical engagement...as an act of love...as an act of warfare...with the past and the present. A wonderful post!

In addition to, “I agree with everything John wrote,” there are a few things I want to say about your post, but first want to start with this quote from Wynton Marsallis' 'Letters to a Young Jazz Musician': “You have to carry the melodic meaning of your culture with you. Sometimes an artist is born into a golden age. Then he or she can state the ideas already transpiring with greater clarity. In other ages, he may have to counter state the trends, to bring things back, or to redirect them. We can't control what age we're born in. But responses and meaningful statements can be made in any age."

To me, how this relates to your message is this: Back when Essex and Joe Beam et al were around, some of us could feel we were in the middle of a renaissance. We knew that what we were feeling was the same as what Langston and others felt in Harlem in the 1920s'. It was a thrilling and energizing time, and in many ways the artists of that time seemed to be reading our minds, they did indeed speak for us, 'stat(ing) the ideas already transpiring with greater clarity' than the rest of us could. We are in a different time now, and perhaps need different artists, different types of artistic expressions.

One also cannot discount the importance of Death. So much gets transmitted in personal meetings between writers and other artists, between artists and their audiences, and from being around then, hearing them read or talk, or just hanging out with them. or even meeting them accidentally: some friends and I once ran into Essex Hemphill on the El train in Philly, for example. With so many people gone, a lot of younger people never had these important formal and informal opportunities for the transmission of knowledge and learning from them. And I'm not only talking about the 'famous' people, the ones who published books or made films and so on: so many people who were important support or inspiration for others, or people who wrote or shared work or information but never made the popular consciousness, are gone as well. There is an enormous, almost incalculable gap in our culture left by so many thousands gone.

One final point I want to make is that for a number of the people you mention, there was a 'social' element to their work and lives as well. I first saw "Looking for Langston" in a basement dance club/reading space; first met Essex in a garage a black gay man had converted into a neighborhood coffee house. The writers were ‘around’, out in the community, and often presented their work in ‘non-traditional’ venues. They went to where the people were, which is also in the tradition not only of the Harlem Renaissance, but also of the Black Arts Movement as well, when Chicago poets including Gwendolyn Brooks and Haki Madhubuti would show up unannounced in bars and begin impromptu poetry readings.

Not sure if this covers all the points in the post and response, but it’s a start. Just because it doesn’t appear that we are in a Golden Age, just as was true in the post Harlem Renaissance period of the 1930s and ‘40’s, I’m sure there are people all around us who are creating meaningful work even as we speak.

Reggie, thank you for this. And the the Wynton Marsallis quote is absolutely genius--it is one that will be sure to reference. That you for sharing it.

Frank, I really understand where you’re coming from with your post. I couldn’t mention people like Saint and Hemphill in my grad classes without receiving blank stares. But I found those stares more refreshing than depressing because it gave me a chance to sing their praises and to teach others about these men, these prophets. There was a time when I, too, knew nothing of black gay cultural products.

The first time I read a “gay” novel, I was in high school, the summer before my senior year I believe. The novel was E. Lynn Harris’ Invisible Life, and the book, its words, and its pages had a melody. I mean it saaannnggg to me. It was like someone had heard my prayers, my pleas, and my pains and put them into print. For a long time, I didn’t understand why the book had such an impact on me. All I know is that is I drank it slowly; I savored it like sweet Carolina iced tea. (I also listened to the Waiting to Exhale soundtrack while I read the book, which made it more flavorful. It was a beautiful combination like crab cakes and grits.) Now I read other books by Harris but none have been able to touch me as deeply as Invisible Life.

Seven years later, I read Melvin Dixon’s Trouble the Water and that sensation returned. Indeed, Dixon’s touch surpassed Harris’. It was orgasmic, and my brothers, this is no exaggeration. Dixon’s tale mixed love and sacrifice, myth and reality, folkways and satisfaction. Being that I’m a glorified country boy like Dixon’s protagonist, I could relate to every dusty bend of a dirt road, every meandering town creek, every smell of grandma’s kitchen.

Then, just last year, I found Essex Hemphill. Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather. That’s how light Essex’s words made me feel, something like the wind, or baby’s breathe. When I read “Now We Think,” “American Wedding,” and “When My Brother Fell, I knew I had heard the voice of God. I hope that does not offend some of my Christian brethren; however, Hemphill’s words rang so clear, so precise, and so trustworthy that it had to be the voice of God.

Hemphill helped me to think, believe, and breathe again. Since reading Ceremonies, I have been “queer theory this” and “black gay that.” It was not until I typed “black queer theory” into Google that I found your blog. I wish to commend you also, Frank. Echoing other posts, every generation has its own prophets, and you are one of those honored few, I do believe. Keep up the good work.

Hi, Frank:

Where have you been all of my life?

I couldn't agree more with what you've said in this post, and I want you to know that there are those of us who- like you stand committed to pushing the dialogue forward for young black gay men. We are deeper, better, and more diverse than the current representations of us would suggest. Many of us are well read. Many of us do honor the traditions of those who have come before. We remember Langston, and Nugent, and Vachel Lindsey, and Alain Locke. My cat's name is Bayard Rustin (they could be twins lol). I challenge young black gay men to educate themselves about the past everyday. We are here because we stand on the shoulders of giants who persevered despite the ugliest odds.

I would love to talk about how to organize around the ideas you've outlined. Much respect that you're addressing it before your captive audience. We're attempting to do the same at Restoration Stage.

Best-
Courtney Baker-Oliver
Founding Artistic Director
Restoration Stage, Inc.
http://www.myspace.com/courtneybakeroliver

"Restoring the Black family- One story at a time!"

"We are deeper, better, and more diverse than the current representations of us would suggest."

i dunno...

something seems a bit awry...possibly elitist...

i guess i'm interested in why people are reading "popular" stuff...what particularly resonates with them...

it just feels so us vs. them in the way things are outlined...

Hollambeee, perhaps you'd like to eludicate on your concerns. I've noticed that in a thread of your recent posts to this blog, you've had a tendency to disagree and/or question what you feel is an "elitism" in my rhetoric. Please, give me more. What about my "current representation of us" (and perhaps you would care to flesh out who exactly constitutes this critical "us" which I am separated from) is "awry" to you?

i quoted a statement from courtney baker-oliver to which i was referring...

perhaps you can ask him who the "we" is to whom he refers who are "deeper, better and more diverse" than what is currently available...

and i think my concern has been posited in a straight-forward manner: "it just feels so us vs. them in the way things are outlined..." wherein "us" are those who are "deeper, better and more diverse" and "them" are those whom are not...

No, it doesnt seem clearer at all actually Hollambee. Passive aggressive, but not at all clear or fleshed out.

interesting...

i didn't think it passive aggressive at all as much as it was a response to the query to "flesh out who exactly constitutes this critical 'us' which I am separated from..."

1 - my response wasn't to your initial post but to courtney baker-oliver...

2 - us (as detailed by courtney) = those black queers whom are "deeper, better, and more diverse"

3 - them (again, detailed by courtney) = those whom are not "deeper, better and more diverse" (i.e., the ones reading the pop-culture shit)

4 - i've also gone through and read my responses to your blogs as of late and i'm failing to see where i've had a "tendency to disagree and/or question what [i] feel is an 'elitism' in [your] rhetoric."

in the fats/fems discussion, i i asked questions about hiv/aids and about the idea of the "healthy body"...in the mario vasquez discussion, i questioned if there is the possibility of violence that is done through our knowledge and allowing space for folks to name themselves...

none of this stuff, for me, is elitism in your rhetoric but i thought i was engaging the conversation...

i certainly disagree and question things that i don't understand or on which i seek further clarification...i don't see how this is calling your rhetoric elitist...

i'm not on here to argue dude...at all...nor am i responding to be passive aggressive if that's how you read my responses...

I'll just say in brief: this is an excellent and engaging blog.

This is a great topic and dialogue that you've created with this post.

I feel that the same sentiments are echoed throughout current Black culture as a whole. It's truly hard to describe it, but it feels as though we are running from our history rather than simply embracing it and taking it with us from day to day.

Some may dismiss it as simple nostalgia, however, they fail to see that looking to the past can surely inform the present and future events that we face.

That said, thanks for writing this and continue with the great work.

Cool essay, well written, but I’m not going to jock. I don't think you're asking the right questions. I came to know Hemphill, Beam, Assotto, because the underground black gay publications at the time spoke of them. They weren't bulletins on college syllabus then; they were the invisible trying to become visible. I remember when I first read "brotha 2 brotha" or saw "Paris is Burning" I finally felt part of the world. Now, it's all I'm a Doctor who's having an affair with the "DL" football player. It's all these perfect characters with no flaws. We're living in a fairytale now, because it's financial lucrative. I think you just did yours and my generation a huge service. I'd once listed on my old website every black gay film and book that's every existed. You can't just read the popular ones you also have to read the unpopular ones. The self-published ones. There is elitism going on in the black gay community right now, there is the "us" vs. them. And we didn't throw the first stone. It’s going to be a huge backlash against those who forgot to include us. I don’t think you’re just privileged and academic, I think you’re questioning. Teach, don’t preach, just teach. Just mention it in a casual conversation. Maybe one day they would go pick up the book. There’s no right or wrong to knowledge, just knowledge. Good Essay, why don’t you take each one of those people and write something about them. Teach.

Teach.
An interesting riposte: we might lament how many do not know Hemphill today, for example, and we might also lament how many men who speak like a thesis and talk the intellectual talk don't actually embrace the original material that they speak about at first hand. So, wise ones, get your Hemphill first editions out and demonstrate why he...or Dodson...or Assotto Saint...or Hughes...ought to be read.

U have touched on several points that I find to be timely...first, are we (that is, black gay men or black people in general) disconnected from our past, our heroines...? Ostensibly, the answer may be yes...I think that your article provides a clear call to all of us kinfolk to get reconnected...to rediscover our past...and by doing so discover our true selves anew. Secondly, is there a need for literature and art that reflects the true spirit of a re-energized...renaissance...that captures the genius and creativity of individuals like Rustin, Hughes, Baldwin...I would love to read literature today that comes close in comparison...

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