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Documenting a black gay and lesbian literary canon: for four years, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture has been compiling an archive from underground, small press and self-published work--and the rest is history in the making.


For most of the 20th century, the canon of writing by and about being black and gay in America may have seemed like scattered, uneven outbursts, whether it's the 1926 explicitly short story about cruising by Richard Bruce Nugent Richard Bruce Nugent (also known as Richard Bruce and Bruce Nugent) (July 2, 1906 - May 27, 1987) was a gay writer and painter in the Harlem Renaissance. He was born in Washington, DC to a prominent African American family. , "Smoke, Lillies, and Jade," of much later, the homoerotic ho·mo·e·rot·ic  
adj.
1. Of or concerning homosexual love and desire.

2. Tending to arouse such desire.

Adj. 1.
 themes in the work of novelist James Baldwin Noun 1. James Baldwin - United States author who was an outspoken critic of racism (1924-1987)
Baldwin, James Arthur Baldwin
. Fifty years after Nugent's notorious story was published n Wallace Thurman's Harlem Renaissance Harlem Renaissance, term used to describe a flowering of African-American literature and art in the 1920s, mainly in the Harlem district of New York City. During the mass migration of African Americans from the rural agricultural South to the urban industrial North  journal Fire!!, a group in the Los Angeles area called the Association of Black Gays published Rafiki, a hodgepodge of writings in the rail of 1976--news bites, information about events, commentary. Rafiki was the first in a series of newsletters, magazines and periodicals that, over the last three decades, has finally offered black queer writers a place to speak frankly about their lives.

Four years ago, New York New York, state, United States
New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of
 City's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture began an effort to collect all of these underground publications, along with the burgeoning list of self- and small-press published books that make up most of the tiny but growing world of black gay publishing. "It reminds me of when black people used to save newspaper clippings just because they had black people in them" jokes Steven G. Fullwood, curator of the Schomburg Center's Black Gay and Lesbian Archives project, describing how he's been following a trail of yellowing papers stored in attics and basements around the country. "It's just us saying, 'We are here!'"

Fullwood has collected at least one issue of about 50 publications and around 150 book titles. The archive is less concerned with the handful of writers who have found commercial success. For example, he points to black lesbian and bisexual women writers like Audre Lorde and Alice Walker, whose womanist wom·an·ist  
adj.
Having or expressing a belief in or respect for women and their talents and abilities beyond the boundaries of race and class: "Womanist ...
 perspectives in the 1970s offered alternative narratives that both countered and completed commentary from the largely white feminist movement. Of course, lately there's been E. Lynn Harris's best selling novels featuring bisexual and gay black male characters, and Samuel Delany's science fiction tomes, which have also developed a loyal following. But instead Fullwood has focused on culling culling

removal of inferior animals from a group of breeding stock. The removal is premature, i.e. before completion of its life span, disposal of an animal from a herd or other group.
 the volumes of work by black "same-gender-loving" writers that are much more lower profile.

The commercial success of novelists like E. Lynn Harris E. Lynn Harris is an Black American author, (b. June 20, 1955). Harris writes primarily about African American men on the down low or in the closet; Harris confirmed that he is a homosexual. He lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas and Atlanta, Georgia.  and James Earl Hardy, whose B-Boy Blues series is popular among black gay men, has no doubt opened up the publishing market. In 2002, Clies Press released an anthology of black gay fiction that continues to draw critical praise--Black Like Us: A Century of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual African American African American Multiculture A person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa. See Race.  Fiction, edited by Devon W. Carbado, Dwight A. McBride, Donald Weise and Evelyn C. White. That same year, Duke University Press released Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance: Selections From the Work Richard Bruce Nugent, edited by Thomas H. Wirth.

But some of the most remarkable writing has sprung from independent settings unconnected to conventional publishing. AIDS Project Los Angles, a social service agency for people living with HIV HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus), either of two closely related retroviruses that invade T-helper lymphocytes and are responsible for AIDS. There are two types of HIV: HIV-1 and HIV-2. HIV-1 is responsible for the vast majority of AIDS in the United States. , began last year publishing a series of slim anthologies meant to shake up the way people think about HIV prevention. With their collections of essays, poems and short stories, the journals are reminiscent of the early black gay periodicals in the Schomburg collection, but they also reveal a literary maturation. They are sharply designed and the editors have chosen complimentary pieces that, together, create a broad enough conversation to draw in those who are not personally invested in either HIV or black gay life.

Kai Wright is a contributing editor at City Limits magazine.
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Author:Wright, Kai
Publication:Black Issues Book Review
Date:Jul 1, 2004
Words:583
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