Open Thread: Remembering E. Lynn Harris
by Latoya Peterson
From the New York Times obituary:
E. Lynn Harris, whose novels about successful and glamorous black men with sexual identity conflicts (and the women and men who love them) made him one of the nation’s most popular writers, died in Los Angeles on Thursday. He was 54 and lived in Atlanta. [...]
Mr. Harris clearly tapped a rich vein of reader interest with his racy and sometimes graphic tales of affluent, ambitious, powerful black men — athletes, businessmen, lawyers and the like — who nonetheless struggled with their attraction to both men and women. His books married the superficial glamour of jet-setting potboilers with an emotional candor that shed light on a segment of society that had received little attention: black men on the down low — that is, men who are publicly heterosexual but secretly have sex with men.
Mr. Harris, who was openly gay but who lived for many years in denial or shame or both over that fact, was able to draw on his own experiences to make credible the emotional conflicts of his characters, and his readers, many of them women, were drawn to his books because they addressed issues that were often surreptitiously pertinent to their own lives.
There’s also a good article on The Root:
He’d be the first to tell you that he was no literary stylist, no turner of sweet phrases, but he knew how to tell tales, tales that people wanted to read. There’s a reason Harris, who died Friday of an apparent heart attack, was a 10-time New York Times best-seller; his writing struck a deep, resonant chord. He may have been a gay black man writing about other gay black men, but he also wrote about black women, straight black women, with sensitivity and often with glowing admiration. Sisters returned the favor, lining up in droves to buy his books, becoming his biggest fans.
From the beginning, when he first self-published Invisible Life in 1994—it would later be picked up by Doubleday—Harris made it OK for black folks to talk about gay issues, from the beauty parlor to the barbershop. His gay male characters were macho men who just happened to love other macho men: football players, basketball players, highly paid executives. Churchgoing folk. He normalized gay life for a community that’s long been in denial about the non-straight folks in the family, and in the process, launched a genre of black gay literature. Publishers looked at the extraordinary selling power of his books, and looked at other black writers—straight or gay—and saw gold in them thar hills.
“His writing, and his incredible mainstream success, encouraged a league of black gay and lesbian writers to follow in his footsteps,” says Lisa C. Moore, the publisher of the black lesbian publishing house, Redbone Press. “His words helped make black gay life accessible and worthy of open discussion to black readers, gay and straight—something much, much needed in black communities. I am grateful to him for opening those doors. He definitely made a powerful impact on the publishing business for black gay folks.”
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
SarahNicole wrote:
Thanks for posting about this. When I was living with my uncle while on a postdoc, I went through his entire stash of Harris’s books. He also had an autographed and framed photo of Harris in his home office. My uncle passed away in the summer of 2005, and when I heard about Harris’s death and heard the interview clips on the radio, I was saddened for his loss, and all over again for the loss of my uncle…
Posted 29 Jul 2009 at 12:48 pm ¶
Marcy Webb wrote:
A friend tweeted re: Harris’ death. Honestly, I had not heard of him prior.
Posted 29 Jul 2009 at 1:01 pm ¶
Zahra wrote:
I saw this news Tuesday and it broke my heart. It would be tragic to lose E. Lynn Harris at any point, but I am especially shocked and saddened by his youth and how out-of-the-blue his death was.
Though I’ve only read one of his books, I appreciate enormously that he was out there and writing about bisexuality, especially male bisexuality, at a time when touching LGBT topics at all was enormously risky. He got flak for it, but he kept at it, and as a bisexual who has spent so much of my life being told I don’t exist, I am grateful.
You have to respect his courage and how much of self-made phenomenon he was–and the sheer business savvy of seeing not only social problems, but a market within the black community and using the beauty shop circuit to reach it. Who else would have had the chutzpah to sell his self-published first novel out of the trunk of his car? The man had smarts. He will be missed.
Keith Boykin posted an appreciation of him yesterday:
http://www.keithboykin.com/arch/blog/2009/07/a_tribute_to_e
Posted 29 Jul 2009 at 2:56 pm ¶
c.n.edaw wrote:
I can’t even remember now who first turned me on to E. Lynn Harris’ work, other than that the person had bought one of his books outside a hair salon and was crowing about men on the “down low”.
In my early 20’s, I was curious and open minded enough to not be the least bit put off by “the nasty sex scene with mens”, as she put it.
I started with “Invisible Life” and just could not put it down. I was obsessed about knowing what happened with certain characters from book to book , like Basil, the bisexual football player who tried to run and hide from his sexuality.
I’m straight, but I was intrigued by his insight into a life I did not know and touched by the way he humanized his characters, flaws and all. It also helped me better understand people like my uncle, proud and gay, but still lovingly tied to his conservative Southern roots and the old time religion he craves, but that condemns him and men like him–despite needing them the choir to sing or to play the piano on Sunday morning LOL!
I was better able to resolve my conflict about what I had been told gay men were supposed to be like versus what the gay men I personally knew were like.
My uncle grew up hunting, fishing, playing ball—you know doing boy things and liking boy things. He dressed well, but very masculine. When he came out to us; I though he had to just be confused and not gay! He was too much of a man, after all.
E Lynn Harris’ books helped me understand NOT EVERY gay black man swishes and sashays like a woman or wants to be a woman as I had been thought to believe growing up. I learned that being gay does not make a man less of a man or woman less of a woman.
In short, he opened my mind, and I am personally grateful for that.
Posted 29 Jul 2009 at 6:22 pm ¶
ashlynn wrote:
I appreciate this post because especially among black youth, E. Lynn Harris flies largely under the radar. I can attest to this because I am one of those people- who have heard his name alongside Omar Tyree, Michael Baisden, Zane, and the like, but have not been largely exposed to his writing. His work carried an important message that was a catalyst for the increasing openness of the LGBT black community to the black community at large. May he rest in peace.
Posted 29 Jul 2009 at 7:51 pm ¶
Niki wrote:
2009 so far has been a sucky year for celebrity deaths–we are losing some “heavy-hitters” this year, and E. Lynn Harris was definitely one of those. He was part of the early 90’s ” new black author boom” (Terri McMillan, Omar Tyree, etc). I remember being in my late teens/ early 20s and reading “Invisible Life”–it caused quite a stir. It seemed like you couldn’t go anywhere for awhile without an E. Lynn Harris book on someone’s bookshelf. His was a needed literary voice. My prayers go out to his friends and family.
Posted 30 Jul 2009 at 9:26 am ¶
Candelaria wrote:
I wrote a tribute to E. Lynn Harris on my blog. It was my good fortune to meet him very early in his career. He was wonderfully warm, outgoing man who shared tips for making a dream happen with those of us who’d come to hear him talk. As I wrote in my post; “Part of his genius was in showing that sexuality is often fluid, people are often hiding in plain view, and that gay relationships are as fraught with strife and filled withlove as straight ones.”
Rea d more at http://blog.candelariasilva.com/2009/07/26/two-word-wizards-pass-e-lynn-harris–frank-mccourt.aspx
Posted 30 Jul 2009 at 11:22 am ¶
Brokey McPoverty wrote:
i can admit to hating these types of books. ’street lit,’ arabesque, whatever you want to call them. i hate them. and i hate that the african-american sections at borders and barnes and noble carry more of them than they do langston hughes and zora neale hurston.
that being said, i LOVED e. lynn harris
i dont know what it was about him that got me reading in spite of my prejudices against the genre, but i read and loved his books. this is a very sad loss indeed 
Posted 30 Jul 2009 at 12:34 pm ¶
kerrita k wrote:
what saddens me most is that gates gate totally obsured the death of an author whose contributions to the black community’s conception of itself were seminal. :0/
-kkm
Posted 30 Jul 2009 at 6:16 pm ¶