Influential People In The LGBTQ+ Community

The free daily newspaper, amNew York Metro, published in its June 29, 2022 issue an alphabetically arranged guide called "LGBTQ+ Power Players." The guide gives a thumbnail sketch of several outstanding members of the LGBTQ+ community in the New York metropolitan area. For me, as a journalist and blogger, it serves as a useful resource.

Among those included are Greg Newton and Donnie Jochum, the co-founders of the Bureau of General Services--Queer Division, the bookstore and cultural center located inside the LGBT Community Center in Manhattan; Rob Byrnes, a Lammy Award-winning author and the president of the East Midtown Partnership; Dwight McBride, president of The New School as well as the co-editor of The James Baldwin Review; and Justin T. Brown, executive director of the Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS) at the City University of New York.

Books On My Summer Reading List, 2022

The following are books I plan to read this summer:

1. Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington by James Kirchick (Holt, 2022).

2. Right to Ride: Streetcar Boycotts and African American Citizenship in the Era of Plessy V. Ferguson by Blair Murphy Kelley (University of North Carolina Press, 2010).

3. One-Shot Harry by Gary Phillips (Soho Press, 2022). (Historical crime fiction.)

4. Last Call: True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York by Elon Green (Celadon Books, 2021).

5. Greenland: A Novel by David Santos Donaldson (HarperCollins, 2022).

6. Paul Laurence Dunbar: The Life and Times of a Caged Bird by Gene Andrew Jarrett (Princeton University Press, 2022).

7. Harlem Sunset by Nekesa Afia (Penguin, 2022). (Crime fiction set during the Harlem Renaissance.)

8. Philip Payton: The Father of Black Harlem by Kevin McGruder (Columbia University Press, 2021). (A biography of the early twentieth-century black real estate mogul.)

The Underground Railroad Ran North And South

Until I started reading biographer Charles J. Shields's book, Lorraine Hansberry, The Life Behind A Raisin in the Sun (Holt, 2022), I thought all black fugitive slaves fled to freedom on the Underground Railroad in only one direction--north to Canada.

In fact, there were fugitive slaves who fled to Mexico via the Underground Railroad. Here is what Shields has written about the journey south of the border:

"During the years of American slavery, the Underground Railroad went south as well as north. The southern route crossed into Mexico, where slavery had been abolished in 1829 for economic reasons. The farthest point on the escape route was the 'Freedom Station' located in Mazamitla, Jalisco, roughly sixty miles south of Ajijic [a village]. Some of the campesinos bringing their farm goods into Ajijic  [during Hansberry's trip there] were descendants of escaped slaves from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama."

Science Versus Fiction, Per Margaret Atwood

 "...[S]cience,...is about knowledge. Fiction, on the other hand, is about feeling. Science as such is not a person, and does not have a system of morality built into it, any more than a toaster does. It is only a tool--a tool for actualizing what we desire and defending against what we fear--and like any other tool, it can be used for good or ill. You can build a house with a hammer, and you can use the same hammer to murder your neighbour."

"Literature is an uttering, or outering, of the human imagination. It lets the shadowy forms of thought and feeling--Heaven, Hell, monsters, angels, and all--out into the light, where we can take a good look at them and perhaps come to a better understanding of who we are and what we want, and what the limits to those wants may be. Understanding the imagination is no longer a pastime or even a duty, but a necessity; because increasingly, if we can imagine it, we'll be able to do it.

"Or we'll be able to try it, at least."

--Margaret Atwood, from the essay, "Scientific Romancing," in her collection, Burning Questions: Essays and Occasional Pieces, 2004 to 2021 (Doubleday/Penguin Random House, 2022.)

Discovering A New Literary Term

While browsing the New Fiction section of the public library on 124th Street in Harlem, I came upon a novel called Tenderness by Alison MacLeod (Bloomsbury, 2021). According to the flap jacket copy, it is the story of D.H. Lawrence and the writing of his 1928 novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover. (I must confess, I've never read the Lawrence novel, but Tenderness may change that.)

On the back of the book were advance praise blurbs, one of which was from novelist David Leavitt who referred to Tenderness as being part of a literary form called "uchronia."

I'd never seen that word before and since I couldn't find it in any of my dictionaries, I consulted the Internet. Wikipedia defined "uchronia" as "a hypothetical or fictional time period of our world, in contrast to altogether-fictional lands or worlds....Some, however, use uchronia to refer to an alternate history."

Two novels said to fit the alternate history description are The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick and The Plot Against America by Philip Roth.

A Romance Story Told Via Song Titles

After I read Amanda Holzer's short story, "Love and Other Catastrophes: A Mix Tape" in the anthology, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2003, edited by Dave Eggers (Houghton Mifflin), it became a story I wish I had written.

The story, originally published in Story Quarterly, follows a romance from beginning to end through a series of song titles and the musicians who recorded them.

It starts off with "All By Myself, Eric Carmen. Looking for Love, Lou Reed. I Wanna Dance with Somebody, Whitney Houston. Let's Dance, David Bowie. Let's Kiss, Beat Happening. Let's Talk About Sex, Salt 'n' Pepa. Like a Virgin, Madonna. We've Only Just Begun, The Carpenters. I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend, The Ramones. I'll Tumble 4 Ya, Culture Club. Head Over Heels, The Go-Go's. Nothing Compares to You, Sinead O'Connor. My Girl, The Temptations. Could This Be Love? Bob Marley. Love and Marriage, Frank Sinatra." And ends several songs later with "I Will Survive, Gloria Gaynor. Hit the Road, Jack, Mary McCaslin and Jim Ringer. These Boots Were Made for Walking, Nancy Sinatra. All Out of Love, Air Supply." Finally ending with the song the story began with, "All By Myself, Eric Carmen."

Altogether about fifty songs, crossing different musical genres. Wow, what an ingenious, inventive way to tell a story, making it a fascinating and humorous journey. You could probably do the same thing with book titles as well.

In fact, in the "Contributors' Notes" in the back of the book, the reader is told that Holzer "encourages you to create your own mix-tape tale." Why not?

Oscar Wilde, Gay Or Bisexual?

When asked "What's the most interesting thing you learned from a book recently?" ("By the Book," The New York Times Book Review, May 8, 2022), author and journalist Candice Millard (River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile, Doubleday, 2022) responded:

"While reading a biography of the Irish writer Bram Stoker, I learned that he happened to be in New York City during the Great Blizzard of 1888, considered one of the worst snowstorms in U.S. history. The city was buried under 22 inches of snow in Mid-March....Stoker was on an American tour with the British actor Henry Irving, whose career he managed before writing 'Dracula.' Also on the trip was Stoker's wife, Florence, a renowned beauty who had been dating Oscar Wilde--yes, Oscar Wilde--when she met Stoker."

Could it be that Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), the revered Irish playwright, novelist, and wit, was more bisexual than he was homosexual?