10 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE January 31, 2003

eveningsout

From Renaissance to fin de siécle

Black gay authors from different decades provide many voices

Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance

Selections from the Work of

Richard Bruce Nugent

edited by Thomas H. Wirth Duke University, $24.95 trade paper

The Long Blue Moan by L.M. Ross

Alyson, $13.95 trade paperback

Warriors & Outlaws

by John R. Gordon

Gay Men's Press, #13.95 trade paper

Reviewed by Anthony Glassman

Eighty years ago, the Harlem Renaissance brought into the spotlight what had previously been ignored, pushed aside and swept under the rug on a number of fronts.

For the first time, the artistic achievements of African-Americans were recognized in a larger arena. Bessie Smith, Zora Neal Hurston, Alain Locke, Langston Hughes and other poets, musicians, writers and artists came into the collective conscious of the country. They brought with them not only a black perspective on the world but, in many cases, a gay perspective.

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Perhaps the most openly gay person in the Harlem Renaissance was Richard Bruce Nugent. He was also, in a way, the redheaded stepchild of the era, never achieving the level of fame that many of his contemporaries and compeers enjoyed. This can be attributed directly to the openness he displayed in writing about his sexual orientation.

Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance is a glimpse at something that was so nearly lost from that time. Thomas H. Wirth lovingly collects writings from various stages in Nugent's career, from the earliest days to his death in the 1980s.

Also included in the book are reproductions of Nugent's artwork, drawings and paintings which run the gamut from surreal to hyper-real. There are also a number of

photographs

of Nugent, his family and friends, giving the reader a clearer image of those whose portraits were painted in verse or prose. The book is, to use a cliché, a musthave. For students of African-American literature, it is the missing piece of the

HARLEM RENAISSANCE

Selections from the Werk of Richard Bruce Movent

must start somewhere, and sometimes an author can be popular in one country but not another.

the

long

blue

moan

Edited and with an Introduction by Thomas H. With

jigsaw puzzle that comprises black history in the 20th century. For lovers of gay literature, it is a rare glimpse of early work that does not share the same morbidity that so often characterized Nugent's Caucasian counterparts.

Fifteen years after Nugent's death, black gay fiction is still . being written. James Earl Hardy's "B-Boys" books are consistently popular, while E. Lynn Harris attracted a standing-room-only crowd to a recent book reading and signing in Cleveland a crowd made up more of heterosexual women than gay men.

WARRIDES & BETLNS

Not all authors are as lucky, though. Some release their novels and are never heard from again, or keep producing works that barely lift them out of obscurity. Whether they deserve the limelight or not, every author

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fore.

Ross

For instance, John R. Gordon's Warriors & Outlaws is his third novel, following the

relative successes in his native Britain

a

of Black Butterflies and Skin Deep. Jazz, young tough in urban London, leads a closeted life of quiet desperation, treating his girlfriend poorly because he cannot give voice to the knowledge that she is not what he wants. When Jazz is forced to hide from police in the apartment of his drag queen neighbor Carly, the embers inside him are stoked into a feverish fire that bring his public and private personalities into a desperate clash. His desire to be honest with the people he loves may, quite literally, kill him. Gordon deftly weaves his

JOHN R. GORDON

tale, carefully crafting the differing vernaculars used by the various characters into a web that can ensnare almost any reader. If there is

any deficiency in the narrative, it may be that some

of the changes that characters

undergo are a bit abrupt. Some of that careful building seems to be

missing, and suddenly there is a skyscraper where barely a foundation existed be-

With L. M. Ross' The Long Blue Moan, however, the one slight defect is that the narrative is over-constructed, bouncing back and forth through time for most of the book.

The novel deals with four friends in New York, a writer, a dancer, a singer and an actor who meet in the 1970s at Performing Arts High School. Their paths through life intersect at odd angles, and the characters circle each other in an odd ballet, becoming closer, then more distant, then closer again as the years pass.

And the years do pass... although not necessarily in the correct order, thanks to some occasionally-jarring flashbacks in the non-linear narrative. It straightens up as the book approaches its climax, and even at its worst doesn't detract much from the enjoyment of seeing what happens to the four men. A number of the cultural references seemed to have slipped on the calendar. Did the song Ross mentions the boys are humming in 1979 actually make the radio by then, or is he jumping the gun by a year or two? But then again, none of us are as young as we once were.

Over the course of 80 years, the writers and the stories may have changed, but the need for them to be told has not. These three books help, but unfortunately there are many voices yet to be heard.