Queering Black History

The latest edition of Lily Lines (formerly The Lily), the Washington Post's twice-weekly gender and identity newsletter, offers a list of "5 Black LGBTQ Pioneers to Know for Black History Month:" Lucy Hicks Anderson, Gladys Bentley, Bayard Rustin, Pauli Murray and Miss Major Griffin-Gracy. I suspect Rustin is the most famous member of this group for most of us, both because he was a man and because we discussed John D'Emilio's biography, Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin, back in 2006. We also read about Bentley in George Chauncey's Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1880-1940, which we discussed in 2009. And some of you may seen the recent film about Murray, "My Name Is Pauli Murray." But Anderson and Griffin-Gracy were new figures for me, at least; the latter is still going strong at 81, by the way.

Frank & Grace...

Among the many treasures at the Smithsonian American Art Museum is "Artist to Artist," a modest installation that's easy to miss but well worth a visit in its own right. Assembled from the museum's extensive 20th-century holdings, the exhibition features eight pairings of figures "whose trajectories intersected at a creatively crucial moment, whether as student and teacher, professional allies or ardently close friends." Two of the pairings include at least one LGBTQ figure--in this case, Frank O'Hara, along with his friend Grace Hartigan, a painter. (See the next item for a pair of gay men, both artists.)

...& George & Paul

And here, also from the Smithsonian American Art Museum's "Artist to Artist" show, is the pairing of George Tooker and Paul Cadmus, both gay painters (and lovers, for a time):

If you liked "Just Above My Head"...

During our Feb. 2 discussion of James Baldwin's Just Above My Head, I mentioned a favorite novel by Richard Powers that has some strong thematic similarities: The Time of Our Singing. I didn't get a chance to go into detail about what I meant then, so here, adapted from the back-cover blurb, is an overview:

On Easter Day 1939, at Marian Anderson's epochal concert on the National Mall, David Strom, a German Jewish emigre scientist, meets Delia Daley, a young black woman from Philadelphia who is studying to become a professional singer. Their mutual love of music draws them together and--against all odds and better judgment--they marry. They vow to raise their children--Jonah, Joseph and Ruth--beyond time, beyond identity, steeped only in song.  

The siblings grow up, however, during the Civil Rights era, coming of age in the violent 1960s, and living out adulthood in the racially retrenched late 20th century. Jonah, the eldest, "whose voice could make heads of state repent"--and is gay--follows a life in his parents' beloved classical music. Ruth, the youngest, devotes herself to community activism and repudiates the white culture her brother represents. Joseph, the middle child and the narrator of this generation-bridging tale, struggles to find himself and remain connected to them both.

I plan to nominate The Time of Our Singing for our reading list when we go through that annual process this fall, but don't wait until then to check it out if you're intrigued. 

Laying the Olympics bare

I don't normally pay much attention to the Olympics, and when I do, I prefer the Summer Games, since you can see more of the athletes' bodies. Knowing that this year's competition is happening in China depressed my interest even further, of course, but this Washington Post story about LGBTQ athletes competing there did pique my interest. As a bonus, that links to a 2017 Pacific Standard magazine article, "A Brief History of the Great Gay Olympics." (The illustrations are wonderful in their own right.) And that, in turn, led to the delightful discovery of a 2004 book by Tony Perrottet I'd never even heard of: The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Games. "Faster, Higher, Stronger, Hornier?" 😎

Covering for James Baldwin

Even though not every attendee had yet finished James Baldwin's final novel, Just Above My Head, the 13 of us at tonight's meeting participated in a wide-ranging discussion. Dom Parisi and Mike Mazza were kind enough to share the following covers from (respectively) the Dell paperback edition; Corgi, a British imprint; and an Italian edition, Sulla mia Testa:

Was she or wasn't she?

As far back as I can remember, I've read claims that Zora Neale Hurston was bisexual, if not a lesbian. But she was married to three different men, and that rumor is not even addressed in her Wikipedia profile--all of which makes me suspect this is a case of wishful thinking. Whatever the truth of that, reading You Don't Know Us Negroes and Other Essays, a brand-new compilation of Hurston's nonfiction, sounds like an excellent way to kick off Black History Month. Here are reviews from the Washington Post and New York Times.

It turns out that another prominent black female writer, Lorraine Hansberry, was bisexual. As Charles J. Shields documents in Lorraine Hansberry: The Life Behind "A Raisin in the Sun," the sadly short-lived playwright had numerous love affairs with women. Here are reviews of Shields' biography from the Washington Post and New York Times.