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Transcription: [00:40:49]
{SPEAKER name="Eugene Ethelbert Miller"}
—to give a reading at American University.
Um, I reviewed this, um, for NPR, and I have serious problems with it.

[00:40:55]
As I told Essex Hemphill, I have some problem with the poems in this book. And I told Essex, I said, you know, I read all these poems by all these men you have in here and they all have problems with their fathers.

[00:41:05]
You know, I said, if I wanted to stereotype homosexual, it's like, well, if you gotta problem with your father, you better look out. And it was amazing, and he agreed! That a lot of the poems in here, you can see the young men wrestling with their fathers. Okay?

[00:41:18]
And that might be a thing in terms of, one, this book becomes interesting for discussion. Um, and I just say that, as just reading it, and as an observation.

[00:41:28]
You know, that this would be a thing that somebody might say, hey, let's look into this a little more closer. Either the father's not there or it's this battle with the father.

[00:41:36]
Okay, so when you read these poems, you know, that's there.

[00:41:39]
In Vanishing Room, what Melvin Dixon does, is, he deals with the whole issue of gay bashing.

[00:41:44]
But what he does, which is a thing that also appears in a lot of the black male homosexual literature, is—

[00:41:50]
you have black men in love affairs with white men. And, I say that because, you know, we're always hearing a lot of stuff about black men falling in love with white women, what that means.

[00:42:00]
So, somebody out here, tell me, what does it mean when black men fall in love with white men?

[00:42:03]
You know, I wanna know what that's about, and what that mean.

[00:42:07]
What is interesting in terms, in this book, is that I felt that the character that Melvin Dixon developed the best— it was the white character.

[00:42:15]
You know, who's wrestling with the sexual identity, who's involved in beating up this white homosexual.

[00:42:22]
Uh, the story is told from a number of different angles. You know, a gay man, uh, a black woman dancer, all these four characters interacting.

[00:42:30]
And it's interesting to see exactly how, um, Melvin Dixon, is caught in some of the same stereotypes that someone outside of literature would criticize.

[00:42:39]
So, I just mention this as a title of a book you might wanna pick up.

[00:42:42]
Let me move from the whole thing of homosexual literature, um, to this whole thing of male bonding.

[00:42:48]
Because, what happens at the same time we're talking about black male homosexuality, there's some interesting things happening, um, within the African-American community in terms of what we call bonding.

[00:42:58]
Those of you who stay abreast with Robert Bly and Michael Meade, and the others know that this, quote, there's a men's movement out there, right?

[00:43:04]
Um, in fact, there was a meeting on, October 5th, over at Duke Ellington, which was sponsored by the Multi Cultural Foundation. These men have been meeting and stuff, and some of the people they have in the— participating,

[00:43:16]
one writer who one would not expect be participating in one of these, like, "men's gatherings", is the poet and writer Haki Madhubuti,

[00:43:24]
uh, who as you know, you follow his essays, has always been concerned about what is happening to young African-American men. The whole thing, African-American men being an endangered species.

[00:43:35]
Uh, we know that when we look around our community, there are many, um, um, households in which the male figure is absent.

[00:43:41]
Um, we hear a lot in terms of, on the media, the need for role models. Recently, we were talking about the debate with regards to the schools in terms of single sex schools, male schools.

[00:43:53]
That perhaps, what is needed in our community is to take the young men aside and give them instruction which is directed to them. Um, so you can deal with that in court. [[laughter]]

[00:44:03]
What you find though, is all this going, going on, and it's very interesting in terms of, it begins to appear also in terms of, of some of the literature.

[00:44:12]
And the writer that I pull out, which I find fascinating is, um, the novelist John Edgar Wideman, because what Wideman does, uh, and it comes out of his background, uh, as a, as a very talented, um, not only Rhodes Scholar, but basketball player.

[00:44:27]
That Wideman really can capture the game, uh, which is a real skill. We often talked about, uh, the African American writer capturing the language, the sounds of the street, or capturing the blues or jazz and— but what Wideman does is he captures basketball.

[00:44:44]
But, it's not just basketball as game. It's basketball in terms of ritual.

[00:44:48]
And, when we deal with bonding and things of that sort, I wish Bly was up here, you know, the whole thing of initiation, ritual, myth— these are the type of things, the whole thing of telling stories.

[00:44:57]
So what happens is that when the young men gather at a court in a city, a ritual is taking place.

[00:45:04]
Okay, there's a place in which the older guys occupy. There's a place where younger guys wanna dunk, you know, and stuff like that. [[laughter]] There's, you know, there's a way that they, they perform.

[00:45:14]
Uh, when there's a whole thing in terms of choosing sides, who gets picked, and stuff like that. It's an initiation.

[00:45:20]
You know, uh, and this is a thing that you find in Philadelphia Fire. And listen to how, this is on page 34 of Philadelphia Fire. And, I'll just read these few paragraphs.

[00:45:30]
"What starts the action" — and keep in mind a ritual, here — "What starts the action--"

Transcription Notes:
00:43:04 does this refer to The Multi Cultural Foundation https://www.themulticultural.org/ about and to Duke Ellington School of the Arts, Washington DC?