The American Century: Literature since 1945 651inherent in mainstream society. So do her later poems, collected in Nappy Edges
(1978), Ridin’ the Moon in Texas: Word Paintings (1987), and I Live in Music (1994),
and plays like Spell #7 (1980) and Whitewash (1994). For Essex Hemphill
(1957–1995), on the other hand, it was not so much literary as social convention
that was rejected. Certainly, the style he favored was far from conventional. Using a
blunt, rapping line, he could be blunt in confronting the reader with what he called
“the ass-splitting truth.” But it was resistance to the myths of black masculinity that
supplied his driving motive. In wanting to assert his identity as both an African and
a homosexual, he renounced the silence that, he felt, had been imposed on black
gays. “I speak for thousands,” Hemphill declared. “Their ordinary kisses ... are
scrubbed away by the propaganda makers of the race,” he went on, “the ‘Talented
Tenth,’ who would just as soon have us believe Black people can fly, rather than that
Black men have been longing to kiss one another, and have done so for centuries.”
So in Ceremonies (1992), a collection of poetry and prose, Hemphill constructed an
alternative to what he called “watered-down versions of Black life” and the
stereotypes of the sad, doomed gay. He anticipated a new erotic dispensation, in
which men transformed institutions to fit their needs: where, as he put it, “Every
time we kiss / we confirm the new world coming.” Like so many other recent African-
American writers, Hemphill gave a fresh spin to the literature of protest and
resistance, as well as to the myth of the promised land. And he did it as they have
done, by insisting on internal resistances, differences within the African-American
community as well as differences with white America.Defining a new black identity in prose
As far as prose is concerned, a seminal event in the history of African-American
writing since World War II was the publication in 1952 of Invisible Man. The author
was Ralph Ellison (1914–1994). Born in Oklahoma and the grandson of slaves,
Ellison was named Ralph Waldo after Emerson. Educated in a segregated school
system, he then went south to Alabama to attend the black college of Tuskegee. In
the South, in particular, Ellison recollected in his second collection of essays, Going
to the Territory (1986), he found all “the signs and symbols that marked the dividing
lines of segregation.” But he also found time to read modern poetry. “Somehow in
my uninstructed reading of Eliot and Pound,” he remembered, “I had recognized a
relationship between modern poetry and jazz music.” “Indeed,” he added, “such
reading and wondering prepared me not simply to meet Richard Wright but to seek
him out.” It was in New York City that Ellison met Wright, who was then editor of
the New Challenge. And it was while he was there that he wrote his first short story,
and also worked in the black community gathering and recording folk material that
was to become an integral part of his fiction. The early work Ellison produced
reflected the influence of Wright and naturalism. But Ellison slowly developed his
own style, a cunning mix of realism, surrealism, symbolism, folklore, and myth.
“I was to dream of a prose which was flexible and swift, confronting the inequalities
and brutalities of our society forthright,” Ellison explained in his first book of essays,GGray_c05.indd 651ray_c 05 .indd 651 8 8/1/2011 7:31:37 PM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 31 : 37 PM