The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Go the Way Your Blood Beats: An Anthology of Lesbian and Gay Fiction by African-American Writers by Shawn Stewart Ruff
Pamela E. Barnett

hawn Stewart Ruff, ed. Go the Way Your Blood Beats: An Anthology of Lesbian and Gay Fiction by African-American Writers. Holt, 1996. 544 pp. Paper: $16.95.

While boy meets boy and girl falls for girl in this collection, Ruff’s editorial vision is antiromance. Conflicts and confusions are not generally subsumed by the happily-ever-after-ending of love. (Marriage not being an available conclusion for realist homosexual writers). In fact, in the section titled “Heartache,” Ruff collects stories in which love is “a many splendid and splintered thing.” Aside from Carolivia Herron’s incantatory celebration of desire in “Epithalamion,” the stories interrogate the difficulties of loving for black gays and lesbians. Ruff has organized the anthology into nine sections, some tellingly titled: “Bad Blood,” “Hemorrhaging,” and “Bashers.” But even the less chillingly indicated sections represent self-doubt, anger, fear, longing that wounds as often as it is fulfilled.

For instance, in “Wet behind the Ears” the stories represent characters realizing or constructing sexual identity. In Gayl Jones’s “The Women” a teenaged girl has straight sex to prove she is not a lesbian like her mother. Yet this defining act is reactive and, hence, described listlessly. This is a pathetic rite of passage; the young woman leads her carelessly selected first lover to her mother’s bedroom and “lets him get on top of [her].” Other selections reflect similarly sad initiations. In “Meredith’s Lie” Ruff’s protagonist discovers her boyfriend kissing another man and retaliates with an unsatisfying hour in bed with the star football player. The story is compellingly unresolved: Meredith, afraid of her desire for a man whose gender is now liminal, ultimately refuses to believe Bruce is gay; he is similarly invested in this self-deception.

While the above stories depict the confusion of sexual “coming of age,” many depict the complications of adults trying to love homosexually but also across racial and class divisions. Reginald Shepherd’s “Summertime and the Living Is Easy” suggests that love for the “same” can be fraught with difference. Is Shepherd’s protagonist, a black man who grew up in the projects, in love with the white man who hosts him for the summer? Or is his desire also for the rarified environment he so lovingly renders in his narration? Perhaps the best exploration of such themes is Randall Kenan’s “Run, Mourner, Run.” Dean, who is poor, white, and gay, agrees to initiate an affair with a successful black man, Raymond, in exchange for money and a promotion. Dean prostitutes himself and betrays Raymond, yet the affair is described as erotic and affectionate. When white men with cameras interrupt their final tryst, it is certain that both men have lost. And when the blackmailer refuses to pay, Dean’s powerlessness as a poor and gay man is visible. With so many sites of difference and subordination, this story, as well as others, questions who exactly is “on the bottom.”

Sapphire’s contribution, “There’s a Window,” does not ask this question; though narrated in the profane diction of an angry, imprisoned woman, this story is marked by mutuality and tenderness. Despite the conditions, Magdalena has managed to scrub her bra scrupulously clean and to obtain protective latex for a first sexual encounter with a new inmate. The narrator is moved: “Here we was in death’s asshole, two bitches behind bars, hard as nails and twice as ugly—caring.” In a book where love is almost always hard-won, complicated, and not necessarily pretty, this story is singularly compelling. [Pamela E. Barnett]


Interview with Founder Board of Directors Funders Submission Guidelines Dalkey Archive Full Catalog Current and Forthcoming Titles Recent Titles Review of Contemporary Fiction Special Library Offer Special Backlist Sale Stores & Wholesalers Academics Libraries Reviewers Context Casebooks Author Interviews Links Dalkey Archive News Events Newsletter

The Review of Contemporary Fiction Go the Way Your Blood Beats: An Anthology of Lesbian and Gay Fiction by African-American Writers by Shawn Stewart Ruff Pamela E. Barnett hawn Stewart Ruff, ed. Go the Way Your Blood Beats: An Anthology of Lesbian and Gay Fiction by African-American Writers. Holt, 1996. 544 pp. Paper: $16.95. While boy meets boy and girl falls for girl in this collection, Ruff’s editorial vision is antiromance. Conflicts and confusions are not generally subsumed by the happily-ever-after-ending of love. (Marriage not being an available conclusion for realist homosexual writers). In fact, in the section titled “Heartache,” Ruff collects stories in which love is “a many splendid and splintered thing.” Aside from Carolivia Herron’s incantatory celebration of desire in “Epithalamion,” the stories interrogate the difficulties of loving for black gays and lesbians. Ruff has organized the anthology into nine sections, some tellingly titled: “Bad Blood,” “Hemorrhaging,” and “Bashers.” But even the less chillingly indicated sections represent self-doubt, anger, fear, longing that wounds as often as it is fulfilled. For instance, in “Wet behind the Ears” the stories represent characters realizing or constructing sexual identity. In Gayl Jones’s “The Women” a teenaged girl has straight sex to prove she is not a lesbian like her mother. Yet this defining act is reactive and, hence, described listlessly. This is a pathetic rite of passage; the young woman leads her carelessly selected first lover to her mother’s bedroom and “lets him get on top of [her].” Other selections reflect similarly sad initiations. In “Meredith’s Lie” Ruff’s protagonist discovers her boyfriend kissing another man and retaliates with an unsatisfying hour in bed with the star football player. The story is compellingly unresolved: Meredith, afraid of her desire for a man whose gender is now liminal, ultimately refuses to believe Bruce is gay; he is similarly invested in this self-deception. While the above stories depict the confusion of sexual “coming of age,” many depict the complications of adults trying to love homosexually but also across racial and class divisions. Reginald Shepherd’s “Summertime and the Living Is Easy” suggests that love for the “same” can be fraught with difference. Is Shepherd’s protagonist, a black man who grew up in the projects, in love with the white man who hosts him for the summer? Or is his desire also for the rarified environment he so lovingly renders in his narration? Perhaps the best exploration of such themes is Randall Kenan’s “Run, Mourner, Run.” Dean, who is poor, white, and gay, agrees to initiate an affair with a successful black man, Raymond, in exchange for money and a promotion. Dean prostitutes himself and betrays Raymond, yet the affair is described as erotic and affectionate. When white men with cameras interrupt their final tryst, it is certain that both men have lost. And when the blackmailer refuses to pay, Dean’s powerlessness as a poor and gay man is visible. With so many sites of difference and subordination, this story, as well as others, questions who exactly is “on the bottom.” Sapphire’s contribution, “There’s a Window,” does not ask this question; though narrated in the profane diction of an angry, imprisoned woman, this story is marked by mutuality and tenderness. Despite the conditions, Magdalena has managed to scrub her bra scrupulously clean and to obtain protective latex for a first sexual encounter with a new inmate. The narrator is moved: “Here we was in death’s asshole, two bitches behind bars, hard as nails and twice as ugly—caring.” In a book where love is almost always hard-won, complicated, and not necessarily pretty, this story is singularly compelling. [Pamela E. Barnett]

Search the full text of our books: