I am so busy at work right now but I had to take a moment to acknowledge the death of E. Lynn Harris . I had the great fortune of requesting funds to bring him to the University of Pittsburgh, my alma mater, when I was editor of BlackLine, the Black student publication there. He was such a kind, gentle, and provocative man. I will never forget his lecture about the lies he told about himself when he was in high school because of the social consequences of being poor in a predominantly White school. Sounds of concern rippled through the crowd when he shared that he once walked almost ten miles home in the middle of the night because he was ashamed to tell his football teammates where he lived. That would only be the beginning of the stigmas he had to confront. As a Black gay man he was once so cornered by the rampant homophobia that proliferates in our culture that he almost took his own life.
I think my experience with E. Lynn Harris is important to feminist discourse because, for me, he was the first messenger I had on the subject of same-sexual romance. I am resolved that positive, feminist self-identity is based on one’s primary source on the concepts and ideas that we use to grapple with and resist our oppression. And he did this for Black same-gender loving people and their loved ones. I ran into his writing in 9th grade on the New York subway when a passenger beside me was clutching one of his novels intently and I read along. From then on I was hooked and read everything he wrote.
His writing made me want to be a writer. In my life, he was arguably one of the most transformative, Black writers of the ‘90s that pushed Black people to talk about sexuality, race, the AIDS crisis and the fullness of relationships that we could arrive at if we dared to just love each other despite the consequences. He gave complexity and context to the men in our community who sleep with men through characters like Basil and Raymond. The world needs more writers like E. Lynn Harris—writers who are willing to tell the truth about the many different sexualities that exist in communities of color. This is especially true in the Black community where media coverage of the Obamas has rendered invisible the familial and sexual arrangements of Black people that more often than not do not take the form of the nuclear heterosexual family.
I hope the famous athlete who E. Lynn Harris loved so much—but never publicly—finally has the courage to come out, stand up, and be counted at his funeral. I hope that those who are homophobic, especially in the Black community, rethink this framework of hatred and discrimination and begin their journey to allophilia by picking up the Invisible Life trilogy. While some may cast E. Lynn Harris off as a typical Black author who abandoned form for content, he had a profound impact on many. I know his stories have opened the discursive space in my community to talk about our sexualities more candidly. I know I am a better person, writer, and ally because he took the time to write even one, single word. He will be missed.
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I'm happy you took the time to acknowledge this man's life; I am not familiar with him or his work but found your article fascinating. I will be sure to check out some of his stuff, thanks for your thoughts.
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