I brace myself for the inevitable. I know the knife is coming down. The truth is on a roll and there’s nothing that can stop it. But on the fourth and final turn, instead of raising the knife slowly as she’d done before, Mary unexpectedly stands as though a pair of giant invisible hands has just lifted her to her feet. Then, knife in hand, resting unreliable in her palm, she starts waltzing around the room as if with a partner. But she’s not enjoying it. Although her moves appear to be choreographed expertly, with every step she’s trying to break free.
“The kidnapping of his daughter was the domino that started the effect. Everything happened so fast, days and events seemed to whiz by in a blur. And by the time they got tired and finished, stood still long enough for us to sort things out, Uncle Ray was in the hospital, nursing a bullet wound to his head, and my parents were bankrupt.”
But just as her breasts and the extra skin around her thighs begin to fall into the rhythm of it, just as her hand slips down into that position ready to take over the imaginary partner’s lead, her feet throwing in the tricky variances and nuances worthy of the most expert ballroom dancers, almost as abruptly as she started, blade raised high, Mary lunges over to the bed and drives it down… It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. That’s what I was thinking when I finally heard the phone. I expected it to hurt more, like one of those pains that makes you pray for a quick death. At first, after the blade plunged into my arm, I couldn’t think or hear much of anything. Just those words resonating in my head: it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The words and a constant ringing. I’ve since remembered pulling the blade from my arm and getting up from the bed to answer the phone, thinking it had to be stopped. The ringing. It had to be answered.
I remember taking note of the candles as I passed by the mantle. Someone or something had blown them out. Every last one blown right out. Aunt Florida’s picture was face down.
I still don’t remember how the t-shirt got wrapped around my arm, only that it was still there, sagging and dripping with blood, as we waited in the emergency room. I also don’t remember picking up the phone, the actual lifting of the receiver. Just that at some point it was in my hand and the ringing had finally stopped.
“Po, it’s Bobby,” my brother kept saying on the other end. “Po, it’s Bobby,” like he didn’t think I could hear him or something.
“Oh, hey Bobby, what’s up? Uh…listen…it’s kind of a bad time, you know? Can I call you back?”
“Po, I’m at the hospital.”
“The…? Yeah? What a coincidence. It’s kind of a bad time, though…”
“Po!”
“Yeah?”
“I’m at the hospital. Dad had a heart attack. He died on arrival… Po? Did you hear me? I said, Dad had a heart attack. He’s dead.”
“Yeah, I… Shit! It’s just that it’s a really bad time right now, Bobby.”
“Po!?”
“I heard you, Bobby. But listen, I can’t do this right now. I’ll call you later, okay? But right now, I gotta go.”
NOTES
The Harlem Renaissance 1900–1950
1. David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. DuBois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919 (Holt, 1993) xvi.
2. Nathan Huggins, ed., W. E. B. DuBois: Writings (Library of America, 1984) 842.
3. David Levering Lewis, ed., The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader (Penguin, 1994) 92, 95.
4. Jonathan Birnbaum and Clarence Taylor, eds., Civil Rights Since 1787: A Reader on the Black Struggle (New York UP, 2000) 178.
5. Birnbaum and Taylor 223–24.
6. Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., eds., Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience (Basic/Civitas, 1999) 1391.
7. Birnbaum and Taylor 260.
8. Carolyn Wedin, Inheritors of the Spirit: Mary White Ovington and the Founding of the NAACP (Wiley, 1998) 107.
9. Wedin 181.
10. Wedin 183.
11. Appiah and Gates 1427.
12. Appiah and Gates 1170.
13. W. E. B. DuBois, The Autobiography of W. E. B. DuBois (International, 1968) 282.
14. David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. DuBois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919–1963 (Holt, 2000) 379.
15. Lewis, W. E. B. DuBois 205.
16. DuBois 282.
17. Steven Watson, The Harlem Renaissance: Hub of African American Culture, 1920–1930 (Pantheon, 1995) 90.
18. Joseph Beam, In the Life: A Black Gay Anthology (Alyson, 1986) 214.
19. Watson 88.
20. John Loughery, The Other Side of Silence: Men’s Lives and Gay Identities: A Twentieth Century History (Holt, 1998) 50.
21. Beam 214.
22. Steve Hogan and Lee Hudson, Completely Queer: The Gay and Lesbian Encyclopedia (Holt, 1998) 164.
23. Gerald Early, ed., My Soul’s High Song: The Collected Writings of Countee Cullen, Voice of the Harlem Renaissance (Anchor, 1991) 97, 109.
24. Early 169.
25. Watson 78.
26. Alain Locke, ed., The New Negro: Voices of the Harlem Renaissance (Boni, 1925) xxv.
27. Watson 25.
28. Watson 58.
29. Watson 24.
30. Arnold Rampersad, ed., The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (Vintage, 1994) 23.
31. Rampersad 122.
32. Rampersad 406, 396.
33. Edward Lueders, Carl Van Vechten (Twayne, 1965) 104.
34. Emily Bernard, ed., Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, 1925–1964 (Knopf, 2001) 6.
35. Bernard xxi.
36. Bernard xxii.
37. Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (Harper, 1937) 25.
38. Barbara Smith, The Truth That Never Hurts: Writings on Race, Gender, and Freedom (Rutgers UP, 1998) 33.
39. Smith, The Truth That Never Hurts 33.
40. Barbara Smith, Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (Kitchen Table, 1983) 73, 77.
41. Smith, Home Girls 75.
42. Smith, Home Girls 73.
43. Akasha (Gloria) Hull, ed., Give Us Each Day: The Diary of Alice Dunbar-Nelson (Norton, 1984) 16.
44. Hull 250.
45. Hull 432.
46. Hull 23.
47. Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth Century America (Columbia UP, 1991) 322.
48. David Levering Lewis, When Harlem Was in Vogue (Knopf, 1981) 166.
49. Lewis, When Harlem Was in Vogue 227.
50. Watson 144.
51. Faderman 76.
52. Faderman 76.
53. Gladys Bentley, “I Am a Woman Again,” Ebony 7 (Aug. 1952) 93–94.
54. Bentley 94.
55. Bentley 98.
56. George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890–1940 (Basic, 1994) 331.
57. Philip S. Foner, ed., Paul Robeson Speaks (Citadel, 1978) 132–33.
58. Mark Naison, Communists in Harlem During the Depression (Grove, 1983) 210–11.
59. Martin Duberman, Paul Robeson: A Biography (New Press, 1989) 394.
60. Eric Brandt, ed., Dangerous Liaisons: Blacks, Gays, and the Struggle for Equality (New Press, 1999) 183.
61. Neil Miller, Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present (Vintage, 1995) 235.
62. Faderman 120.
63. Darlene Clark Hine and Kathleen Thompson, A Shining Thread of Hope: The History of Black Women in America (Broadway, 1998) 264.
64. Faderman 119.
65. Jonathan Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (Crowell, 1976) 140.
66. Neil Miller, Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present (Vintage, 1995) 259.
67. Miller 259.
68. Miller 260.
69. Katz 614.
70. Katz 615.
71. Katz 585–86.
72. Katz 591.
73. Mark Blasius and S
hane Phelan, eds., We Are Everywhere: A Historical Sourcebook of Gay and Lesbian Politics (Routledge, 1997) 235.
The Protest Era 1950–1980
1. James Baldwin, speaking in the film The Price of the Ticket, 1989.
2. Jonathan Birnbaum and Clarence Taylor, eds., Civil Rights Since 1787: A Reader on the Black Struggle (New York UP, 2000) 351–52.
3. Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, eds., Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge (New York UP, 2000) 110.
4. Bayard Rustin, “Montgomery, Alabama,” in The War Resister, 1957.
5. David J. Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (Morrow, 1986) 16.
6. Garrow 16.
7. Joan Grant, Ella Baker: Freedom Bound (Wiley, 1998) 123.
8. Beverly Guy-Sheftall, ed., Words of Fire: An Anthology of African American Feminist Thought (New Press, 1995) 14.
9. Hazel V. Carby, Race Men (Harvard UP, 1998).
10. Grant 230.
11. Jet magazine, March 1949.
12. Rustin, “Montgomery, Alabama.”
13. Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen (Harper, 1997) 231.
14. Bayard Rustin interview in Washington Blade, 13 Jan. 1984.
15. Anderson 231.
16. John A. Salmond, My Mind Set on Freedom: A History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954–1968 (Dee, 1997) 101.
17. Mary King, Freedom Song: A Personal Story of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement (Morrow, 1987) 568–69.
18. Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (Harvard UP, 1981) 148.
19. Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (Morrow, 1984) 302.
20. David Hilliard interview for Black Like Us, Oakland, Calif., 10 June 2001.
21. Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice (McGraw-Hill, 1968) 14, 100.
22. Huey P. Newton, “The Women’s and Gay Liberation Movement,” in To Die for the People: Selected Writings and Speeches (Random, 1972) 152.
23. Susan Brownmiller, In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution (Dial, 1999) 7.
24. Karla Jay, Tales of the Lavender Menace: A Memoir of Liberation (Basic, 1999) 145.
25. Neil Miller, Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History, from 1869 to the Present (Vintage, 1995) 375–76.
26. Jay 131.
27. Miriam Schneir, ed., Feminism in Our Time: The Essential Writings, World War II to the Present (Vintage, 1994) 163.
28. Schneir 161.
29. Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (Doubleday, 1970) 32.
30. Adrienne Rich, Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose 1979–1985 (Norton, 1986) 49.
31. Rich 51.
32. Toni Morrison, “What the Black Woman Thinks,” in Barbara A. Crow, ed., Radical Feminism: A Documentary Reader (New York UP, 2000) 454.
33. Schneir 173–74.
34. Barbara Smith, The Truth That Never Hurts: Writings on Race, Gender, and Freedom (Rutgers UP, 1998) 272.
35. Smith 275.
36. Toni Cade Bambara, ed., The Black Woman: An Anthology (Signet, 1970) 7.
37. Bambara 37.
38. bell hooks, Feminist Theory from Margin to Center (South End, 1984) 2.
39. Smith 5.
40. Smith 20.
41. Mark Blasius and Shane Phelan, eds., We Are Everywhere: A Historical Sourcebook of Gay and Lesbian Politics (Routledge, 1997) 283.
42. Miller 339.
43. Ernestine Eckstein with Barbara Gittings and Kay Tobin, “An Interview with Ernestine,” The Ladder, June 1966, 5–6.
44. Eckstein 11.
45. Audre Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (Crossing, 1982) 180.
46. Lorde, Zami 181.
47. Dudley Clendinen and Adam Nagourney, eds., Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in America (Simon, 1999) 32.
48. David Deitcher, ed., The Question of Equality: Lesbian and Gay Politics in America Since Stonewall (Scribner, 1995) 78.
49. Miller 388.
50. Barbara A. Crow, ed., Radical Feminism: A Documentary Reader (New York UP, 2000) 327.
51. Steve Hogan and Lee Hudson, Completely Queer: The Gay and Lesbian Encyclopedia (Holt, 1998) 18.
52. Mark Thompson, ed., The Long Road to Freedom: The Advocate History of the Gay and Lesbian Movement (St. Martin’s Press, 1994) 196.
53. Miller 402.
54. Deitcher 52.
55. Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Life in Twentieth- Century America (Columbia UP, 1991) 147.
56. Sharon Malinowski, ed., Gay and Lesbian Literature (St. James, 1994) 1: xvii.
57. Barbara Smith, ed., Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (Kitchen Table, 1983) 83.
58. Smith, Home Girls 86.
59. Jonathan Katz, Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (Crowell, 1976) 639–40.
60. Guy-Sheftall 139.
61. Guy-Sheftall 128.
62. Audre Lorde, The Black Unicorn: Poems (Norton, 1978) 82.
63. Lorde, The Black Unicorn 28.
64. Mari Evans, ed., Black Women Writers (1950–1980): A Critical Evaluation (Doubleday, 1984) 264.
65. Anita Cornwell, Black Lesbian in White America (Naiad, 1983) 1.
66. Cornwell 19.
67. Cornwell 18.
68. Pat Parker, Movement in Black (Crossing Press, 1983) 11.
69. Parker 99, 77.
70. Parker 17.
71. John D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Making of a Homosexual Minority in the United States 1940–1970 (U of Chicago P, 1983) 35.
72. Blasius 280.
73. Blasius 235.
74. Hogan and Hudson 65.
75. James V. Hatch, Sorrow Is the Only Faithful One: A Life of Owen Dodson (U of Illinois P, 1993) 179.
76. D’Emilio 181.
77. Samuel R. Delany, Silent Interviews: On Language, Race, Sex, Science Fiction, and Some Comics (Wesleyan UP, 1994) 73.
78. Hogan and Hudson 471.
79. Claude J. Summers, ed., The Gay and Lesbian Literary Heritage: A Reader’s Companion to the Writers and Their Works, from Antiquity to the Present (Holt, 1995) 44.
80. Joseph Beam, ed., In the Life: A Black Gay Anthology (Alyson, 1986) 13.
Coming Out Black, Like Us 1980–2000
1. Audre Lorde, “Learning from the 60s,” in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Crossing, 1984) 135.
2. Larry Kramer, “1,112 and Counting,” in Reports from the Holocaust: The Making of an AIDS Activist (St. Martin’s, 1989) 33.
3. Cathy Cohen, The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics (U of Chicago P, 1999) 260.
4. Nathan Hare and Julia Hare, The Endangered Black Family: Coping with Unisexualization and the Coming Extinction of the Black Race (Black Think Tank, 1984) 65.
5. Essex Hemphill, “If Freud Had Been a Neurotic Colored Woman: Reading Dr. Frances Cress Wesling,” in Ceremonies: Poetry and Prose (Dutton, 1992) 61.
6. Devon Carbado, ed., Black Men on Race, Gender, and Sexuality (New York UP, 1999) 306.
7. The Million Man March: Day of Atonement, Reconciliation and Responsibility and Day of Absence—Mission Statement 2 (1995).
8. Dennis Holmes, “An Opportunity to Empower Gay Blacks,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 13 Oct. 1995, 19c.
9. Carbado, 293.
10. Carbado 294.
11. Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620, 635 (1996).
12. Wilma Mankiller et al., eds., The Reader’s Companion to U.S. Women’s History (Houghton, 1998) 640.
13. Frontiers magazine, Oct. 1989.
14. June Jordan, “On Bisexuality and Cultural Pluralism,” in Affirmative Acts: Political Essays (Doubleday, 1998) 137.
15. “Rants and Raves” in The Advocate, 15 Feb. 2000, 10.
16. Catherine E. McKinley and L. Joyce DeLaney, eds., Afrekete: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Writing (Doubleday, 1995) xv.
17. Kathleen E. Morr
is, Speaking in Whispers: African American Lesbian Erotica (Third Side, 1996) 10.
18. Lisa Duggan and Nan D. Hunter, Sex Wars: Sexual Dissent and Political Culture (Routledge, 1995) 4.
19. Author’s website.
20. Marci Blackman, Po Man’s Child (Manic D, 1999) 11.
21. Edmund White, “Out of the Closet, on to the Bookshelves,” in David Bergman, ed., The Burning Library: Essays (Knopf, 1994) 277.
22. Marvin K. White, Last Rights (Alyson, 1999) 136.
23. Michael J. Smith, “The Double Life of a Gay Dodger,” in Michael J. Smith, ed., Black Men/White Men: A Gay Anthology (Gay Sunshine, 1983) 130.
24. Smith 132.
25. Smith 133.
26. Melvin Dixon, Vanishing Rooms (Dutton, 1991) 104.
27. James Earl Hardy, B-Boy Blues (Alyson, 1994) 201.
28. Marlon Riggs, interview with Bettina Gray, “The Creative Mind,” PBS, 1991.
29. E. Lynn Harris, Invisible Life (Anchor, 1994) 212.
30. E. Lynn Harris in The Advocate, 13 June 1997.
31. Charles Michael Smith, ed., Fighting Words: Personal Essays by Black Gay Men (Avon, 1999) 152.
PERMISSIONS
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for granting permission to reprint copyrighted material:
Donna Allegra, “Dance of the Cranes” from Witness to the League of Blond Hip Hop Dancers: A Novella and Short Stories. © 2000 by Alyson Books. Reprinted by permission of Alyson Publications, Inc.
Red Jordan Arobateau, “Suzie Q.” © 1978 by Red Jordan Arobateau. Reprinted by permission of the author.
James Baldwin, excerpt from Another Country. © 1962 by Dial Press. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate. James Baldwin photograph reprinted by permission of Retna Ltd. NYC.
Becky Birtha, “In the Life” from Lovers’ Choice. © 1987 by Seal Press. Reprinted by permission of Seal Press. Becky Birtha photograph reprinted by permission of Tee Corinne.
Marci Blackman, excerpt from Po Man’s Child. © 1999 by Manic D Press. Reprinted by permission of Manic D Press.
Julie Blackwomon, “Symbols.” © 1990 by Seal Press.
Cheryl Clarke, “Women of Summer.” © 1978 by Cheryl Clarke. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Michelle Cliff, “Ecce Homo.” © 2000 by Michelle Cliff. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Black Like Us Page 59
