Fighting Words

Fighting Words

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Title: Fighting Words: Personal Essays by Black Gay Men
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Author: Charles Michael Smith

Format: Paperback, 208pp.
Publisher: Avon Books
Pub. Date: June 1999

A boy discovers his sexuality in the shadow of a murder spree in Atlanta. A U.S. marine writes of his fierce, tragic love for a fellow marine. A man is forced to do a thing he dreads-play basketball-or risk losing face to the youngster for whom he is trying to provide a role model.

These and twenty-seven other illuminating essays reveal a world of double barriers and two-fold prejudices-a world of men looking for love and careers, companionship and mentors, rough trade and gentle understanding among those who alone can know what it means to be African-American and gay. Writings that range from the street-smart to the erudite, from the erotic to the political and the spiritual, this collection explores the vicious crosscurrents of pressures that black gay men face, and the ways they have coped with them-or failed to.

A vivid, candid and provocative portrait of a diverse community, FIGHTING WORDS is a remarkable anthology of individual journeys experienced by African-American gay men.

About the Author
Charles Michael Smith is a freelance journalist who has written for such publications as USA Today, the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, the Baltimore Evening Sun, the Manhattan Spirit, QW magazine, the New York Amsterdam News, the New York Native, the Philadelphia Gay News, and the Lambda Book Report. He was a contributor to In the life: A Black Gay Anthology, edited by Joseph Beam(Alyson, 1986). He lives in New York City.

Review Publishers Weekly
In putting together a volume that emphasizes the urgency of subjective experience, freelance journalist Smith has grouped 28 personal essays in familiar categories: Identity, Relationships, AIDS, Racism and Homophobia, Legacy. Among the best pieces is poet Reginald Shepherd's "Coloring Outside the Lines," which shows considerable subtlety in reconciling the often clashing demands of black and gay identities. Kevin McGruder's "I Hate Basketball" is both playful and earnest as it tackles similar themes and expresses insights gained from mentoring young black boys as a Big Brother. "As an African-American male," he writes, "I admit this with a certain hesitancy, a slight feeling that I have let down the race, and as a gay man, I admit this with the feeling that I'm confirming a stereotype of non-athletic `sissies.' But I love to play most sports. I just don't like playing basketball." With less clarity, G. Winston James's "Closets" traces a problematic genealogy from the safety of children's closets to the claustrophobic spaces of peep shows in "safer-sex clubs" that were "not unlike the pantry in my parents' house." Other of the essays, however, traffic in stereotypes about both race and homosexuality. And the emphasis on personal experience is relentless and ultimately comes at the expense of more considered insight and elegance of expression. (June) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.