Status
Call number
Collection
Publication
Description
Freedom in This Village charts for the first time ever the innovative course of black gay male literature of the past 25 years. Starting in 1979 with the publication of James Baldwin's final novel, Just Above My Head, then on to the radical writings of the 1980s, the breakthrough successes of the 1990s, and up to today's new works, editor E. Lynn Harris collects 47 sensational stories, poems, novel excerpts, and essays. Authors featured include Samuel R. Delany, Essex Hemphill, Melvin Dixon, Marlon Riggs, Assotto Saint, Larry Duplechan, Reginald Shepherd, Carl Phillips, Keith Boykin, Randall Kenan, Thomas Glave, James Earl Hardy, Darieck Scott, Gary Fisher, Bruce Morrow, John Keene, G. Winston James, Bil Wright, Robert Reid Pharr, Brian Keith Jackson, as well as an array of exciting new and established writers.… (more)
User reviews
I will get my few quibbles about the anthology out of the way as well. Perhaps one more pass by an editor would have picked up on the all caps printing of Marvin K. White’s poem. The relatively small ratio of poets to prose writers in the collection does not accurately reflect the centrality of verse in the making of contemporary black gay America. Finally, the bibliography at the close of the book, is also somewhat frustratingly incomplete, listing, for example, only one of Cyrus Cassells four books of poetry, and Randal Keenan’s fiction, but not his nonfiction tour of black America Walking on Water. Use of the word ‘selected’ here would have solved this problem.
But enough nit picking: This is a wonderful, panoramic collection of work.