fiction and musings from a gay black dude with delusions above his station
Minstrels of various stripes have graced college campuses for decades. At 1980s UCLA, all we got were preachers. Some were local, some visited from afar. But they all had the same message: you are evil and are going to hell. One of my favorites was Brother Jed. He came with an entourage that included his…
25 years ago, either this week or next, I wrote a letter to my family entitled “What James Baldwin, Bayard Rustin, and Gregory A. Russell Have In Common.” Sadly I don’t think I have a copy of it anymore, though I don’t think the essay itself was as good as the title I gave it….
Friend Patricia Dunn, author of the celebrated new YA (young adult) novel “Rebels by Accident,” and her colleague Christopher Messer run a series of essays on her blog entitled “Why Do I Write.” She asked me for a contribution and, after panicking about “OMG! I have to write on demand!” and other silly writer’s nonsense,…
Dad was walking home from work one day when he suddenly started crying. He got home and Mom asked what was the matter. He couldn’t get the images of Vietnam out of his head. “How can we keep our boys away from that?” he said. Their boys, my older brothers, were coming close to the…
