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African-American queers for dummies? >> Recommended reading for the 'A' train by JOHANNE CADORETTE
The following is small a selection of queer black reading, but don't read these books just because it happens to be Black History Month. Read them because they're about brilliant individuals whose lives have had or are having profound effects on our culture. Black lesbians and gays have had a tremendous impact on music culture as we know it today. Angela Davis, the '70s feminist icon now teaching at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has recently published a fascinating book, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism (Pantheon, $38.50). Davis's exhaustive study explores the work of blues legends Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday. Davis contextualizes them as being from the first generations of post-slavery African-Americans able to freely choose sexual partners. This emancipation inspired blues women like Rainey, Smith and Holiday to write songs about sexuality and relationships (both homo and heterosexual) with a startling frankness and passion. While Rainey, Smith and Holiday are all known to have had sexual relations with women, Davis' book doesn't focus on their personal lives as much as on the feminist impact of their (sometimes lesbian) songs. Jackie Kay, in her whimsical book Bessie Smith (Absolute, $14.50), offers a more personal vista on the explicit bisexual and lesbian nature of Smith and Rainey's relationships. David Hajdu's peerless biography of pianist and composer Billy Strayhorn, Lush Life (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, $21.50), uncovers the life of one of jazz's best kept secrets. Strayhorn worked for over 30 years writing and arranging music for Duke Ellington's orchestra, yet little is known about him. He wrote the hit song "Take the 'A' Train," following Ellington's directions to get to his house in Harlem after the two first met in Pittsburgh in 1938. Ellington can certainly be chastised for repeatedly taking credit for Strayhorn's work. But Ellington also provided an environment that encouraged Strayhorn to be out about his sexuality without jeopardizing his career. In fact, it was Ellington's son Mercer and daughter Ruth who introduced Strayhorn to his longtime lover Aaron Bridgers.
On a more contemporary and political note, Keith Boykin's One More River to Cross (Anchor Books, $19.95) is a remarkable exploration of race and gender relations in America. Boykin, currently the director of the National Black Gay and Lesbian Leadership Forum, examines issues of homophobia and racism in American politics, the African-American and lesbian and gay communities. After graduating from Harvard Law School, Boykin worked as a media spokesperson for the Clinton administration. While his political experience lends an unquestionable depth to his analysis, he continuously supports his ideas via stories of his own encounters and battles with inner and outer homophobia and racism. While there is no finger-pointing in Boykin's book (gay racism and black homophobia are given equal attention), it is nevertheless telling that gay racism is addressed thoroughly for the first time in a mainstream book by a person of colour.
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The power of Black History Month lies not in showcasing the obvious, but in the opportunity for us to discover veritable gems by looking beyond our white-washed history. Just as there is no definitive book on the history of lesbians or gays, there is no such volume on the history of black gays and lesbians.
Moving across the decades and jumping from music to poetry: the publishing of The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde (Norton, $45), a voluminous hardcover, lands Lorde solidly in the cannon of contemporary poetry. Audre Lorde died after a long battle with breast cancer in 1992. She left behind a legacy of poetry and prose dealing with racism, lesbianism, love, motherhood, life, death, illness--in short, all of the stuff of life. Lorde never left any of her identities at the door. Her poetry ranges from the humorous, the passionate, the political, the philosophical, the day to day and is, above all, intensely inspiring.