"In The Life" 's 40th Anniversary

October of this year will mark the 40th anniversary of In the Life, the groundbreaking black gay anthology edited by Joseph Beam and published by Alyson Books in 1986.

How I Became An "In The Life" Contributor

How I came to write about the Harlem Renaissance writer and artist Richard Bruce Nugent for Joseph Beam's 1986 anthology, In the Life, is an interesting story.

Joe, who worked at a gay bookstore in Philadelphia called Giovanni's Room, wrote me a fan letter and sent it in care of the New York Native, a weekly gay paper that I wrote for in a freelance capacity in the early eighties.

The bookstore carried the Native which Joe told me he only read if it had an article in it by me. He was admittedly hungry for articles about other black gay men of which there was not that much, particularly in the gay press.

A short time later, Joe asked me to write an article about Bruce Nugent and gave me his phone number in Hoboken, New Jersey. Looking back, Joe probably got the number from Tom Wirth, Nugent's friend and literary executor, who reissued the controversial journal, Fire!!, that Nugent, Langston Hughes, and others put out in the 1920s.

Up to that point, I knew nothing about Nugent. But I took on the assignment and wrote an article in which I tried to put Nugent's life and career within a larger context of what was happening in Harlem and elsewhere, artistically and otherwise.

Years after In the Life came out, I discovered that I'd  been in error when I said that Bruce Nugent was the last living member of the Harlem Renaissance. He wasn't. Dorothy West, also a writer, was still alive when I interviewed him.

Dorothy Beam, Writer Joe Beam's Mother, Has Died

I just learned via archivist Steven G. Fullwood's Facebook page of the passing of Dorothy Beam on December 26, 2018 at the age of 94. She was the mother of Joseph Beam, the editor of In the Life: A Black Gay Anthology, of which I was a contributor. Joe died in 1988.

A memorial service for Mrs. Beam is set for Wednesday, January 9, 2019, at 11 a.m., at the Vine Memorial Baptist Church, 5600 West Girard Avenue, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

R.I.P. Mrs. Beam.

A Letter To A Book Editor

The following letter, dated July 13, 2015, was sent to Jennifer Brehl, an editor at HarperCollins. She replaced Charlotte Abbott, the editor who acquired Fighting Words for Avon Books in 1997. Fighting Words is an anthology of essays by black gay men that I edited. It was published in 1999. At the time of the acquisition,  Avon Books was owned by the Hearst Corporation. It was later sold to HarperCollins, which is part of Rupert Murdoch's media empire.


Jennifer Brehl, Editor
HarperCollins Publishers
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007

Dear Jennifer:

On January 9, 2015, you left me a voice mail message in which you stated that the outline I submitted for a book about the gay and lesbian aspect of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s was turned down. The reasons given were that the sales for Fighting Words "were not as robust as we'd like to see" and that the outline was "not right for William Morrow [a HarperCollins imprint] at this time.We're not doing as much of that type of nonfiction paperback original."

I want to point out that despite Fighting Words's lack of "robust sales," it has been cited in the endnotes of other books. In fact, the late author E. Lynn Harris included Donald K. Jackson's essay, "The Letter," in the anthology he edited called Freedom in This Village.

Also, the Copyright Clearance Center has sent me requests from professors at such places as Dartmouth for permission to make copies of essays from the book for distribution and use in their classrooms.

Gay Men of African Descent (GMAD) not too long ago had an exhibition at the Schomburg Center in Harlem to commemorate the 20th or 25th anniversary of the organization. I was very pleased to see a copy of Fighting Words in a display case featuring other books with a GMAD connection. A few GMAD members, among them Robert E. Penn and Kevin McGruder, were contributors to my anthology.

So you see, even though Fighting Words was not a big seller, it has made an impact in other ways.

Sincerely yours,
Charles Michael Smith

Note: I neglected to mention in the letter that Fighting Words was one of the nominees for the 1999 Lambda Literary Award in the Anthologies/Nonfiction category.

My First Trip To Philadelphia, 1985

It was thirty years ago this past September that I was invited by Joe Beam to a poetry reading in Philadelphia featuring Essex Hemphill and Pat Parker (both, like Joe, now deceased). It was my first trip to Philadelphia (I got there via Amtrak). It was also at this time that Joe showed me the typescript of his groundbreaking anthology about black gay men, In the Life. I became a contributor to the book.

A year or so earlier, Joe sent me the book's Introduction. He wanted me to read it and make any suggestions. I remember it being very long. I'm sure I made several suggestions but the only one that sticks out is my suggestion that he begin the Introduction at a particular point in the text. He took my advice which is why the Intro begins where it does.

A Leap Into Eternity

In the introduction to For Colored Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Still Not Enough (Magnus Books, 2012), the enjoyable anthology edited by Keith Boykin, he ponders about Tyler Clementi, the gay young man who leaped to his death from the George Washington Bridge. "As I drive across the George Washington Bridge one night from Manhattan to the CNBC World Headquarters in New Jersey, I looked down over the bridge and imagined what it must have felt like to jump 212 feet into the raging Hudson River below."

Fifty years earlier, James Baldwin no doubt had the same thoughts about his friend Eugene Worth who leaped from the same bridge in the late 1940s. Baldwin recreated that act in his 1962 novel Another Country. In that book, Baldwin had the character Rufus leap from the GWB at the end of Chapter One. Boykin could have put himself in the shoes of Clementi and Rufus as he read the following description by Baldwin: "...and then the wind took him, he felt himself going over, head down, the wind, the stars, the lights, the water, all rolled together, all right. He felt a shoe fly off behind him, there was nothing around him, only the wind,...."

I wanted to include these passages in my online review of For Colored Boys, but I couldn't see how to fit it in seamlessly.

Gay Men Of Color Tackling Thorny Issues

For Colored Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Still Not Enough: Coming of Age, Coming Out, and Coming Home
Edited by Keith Boykin
Magnus Books, 334 pp.

Despite the social and political progress made by gay men in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, some things--like bullying, bigotry, suicide (attempted and successful), and self-loathing--are constant reminders that there is a need for further change.

For Colored Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Still Not Enough addresses these and other thorny issues through essays and poetry by more than 40 contributors, who represent a diverse cross-section of gay men of color, both ethnically and occupationally.

With the exception of Keith Boykin, the collection's editor, James Earl Hardy, and two or three others, most of the contributors are not yet household names. But that in no way diminishes the power or importance of their words and life experiences, which are presented as tragic or funny or defiant or scary or inspirational.

"[W]e must tell our own stories," declares Boykin, in the introduction, "in a way that represents us as full human beings." These 40 plus stories attempt to achieve that goal by peeling back the years to reveal the physical and psychic pain meted out to them by peers, family members, pastors, teachers, and others. The pain expressed in these essays is so palpable, so intense I sometimes wondered how they were able to overcome their experiences without losing their minds.

Boykin groups the essays and poems into ten categories such as "Growing Pains," "Faith Under Fire," "Love Is a Battlefield," and "In Sickness and Health," thus giving the reader a broad range of experience.

One essay that particularly stood out for me is Phill Branch's serio-comic "Chicago," which had me on the edge of my chair, as he recalls the time when he was a naive college kid newly arrived in Los Angeles to become "the next Spike Lee." Being "bored, unhappy, and horny," he answers a personal ad in a magazine placed by a black man who says he hails from Chicago and is into "ff" (fisting), "ws" (water sports), and "k" (kink). When Branch arrives at the man's house in a L.A. suburb, he soon regrets answering the ad. "I'd imagined that being gay would come with some obstacles, but I'd never imagined being trapped in a townhouse, in Norwalk, by a man with a plate in his head would be one of them."

Another essay that moved me is Keith Boykin's eloquent, almost cinematic "When I Dare to Be Powerful," a retelling of the "historic but controversial all-male event" called the Million Man March, which took place in Washington, D.C. in 1995. Boykin and his cohorts in a moment of courage and determination, "[f]ists punching  against the air" while chanting a pro-gay slogan, cut a path through the masses of straight black men with surprisingly "no homophobia, no insults, no violence, or conflict."

The one drawback of For Colored Boys is the absence of any essays from gay men who came of age in the 1940s, '50s, and '60s. This would have given the anthology an historical context with which to compare and contrast gay men of today and in the past.

Otherwise, For Colored Boys is a worthy addition to one's library if for no other reason than the fact that it bears witness to the persecution of gay men and lets readers know that there are others who not only have shared their pain but have found a way to survive and thrive.

This article was originally published online by the Lambda Literary Review (October 6, 2012).