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.

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.

When Black Gay Arts Thrived

Much has been written and said about the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s. However, very little has been written about another black arts movement that occurred among black gays and lesbians mainly here in New York. As you may know, the '80s was a frightening time because of the burgeoning AIDS crisis. But it was also a very creative period for black gays and lesbians in all the arts: fiction, the theatre, photography, music, dance, film, and art.
Out of this period came such notables as Assotto Saint, Melvin Dixon, Marlon Riggs, Joseph Beam, Barbara Smith, Audre Lorde, Essex Hemphill to name a few.
Unfortunately, most of the male individuals are now dead, victims of the AIDS epidemic. They left behind, however, a body of work that revealed a promising talent that was cut short.
Also, at that time numerous literary journals began to emerge: Other Countries Journal, Habari Daftari, BLK, Pyramid Periodical, In the Life: A Black Gay Anthology, etc.
From 1983 to 1988, I wrote for the now-defunct weekly newspaper, the New York Native. Most of the articles I contributed focused on the black gay and lesbian community. So I got the opportunity to interview and write about many of the participants of this movement. A few of them like Assotto Saint became friends. So whenever I see them mentioned in an article or book, my mind goes back to when I spoke to them on the phone or attended one of their readings or ate dinner with them. For me they will always be more than just a name on a printed page.
Just as Edmund White and Felice Picano have kept the memory of the members of the Violet Quill writing group alive, so too should the names and the work of the aforementioned writers be memorialized.
Eventually someone will write a memoir or critique of the black gay arts movement. I hope I will be able to share my thoughts and memories as well as documentary material with that scholar.