intellectual, and literary biases black gay intel-
lectuals face, while Charles Nero looks “Toward
a Black Gay Aesthetic” development in literature
with the premise of finding a positive black iden-
tity that renders the life of a black homosexual as
“visible” and “valid” (229). The search for a posi-
tive, true figure, one fully realized by family and
by the broader community, is what brings this
collection together. What the Hemphill collection
provides, beyond the search for community, is a
notable literary text for young gay men to read
and learn by.
Lawrence Potter, Jr.Brown, Claude (1937–2002)
Writer and autobiographer Claude Brown was
born on February 23, 1937, in Harlem, New York.
He is best known for his novelistic autobiography,
Manchild in the Promised Land (1960), which, ac-
cording to Macmillan, its publisher, has sold more
than 4 million copies and has been translated into
14 languages. He is also the author of The Children
of Ham (1976), a children’s book.
By age eight Brown was already living the
troubled life associated with many urban poverty-
stricken blacks of his generation.
Brown spent most of his youth in and out of
juvenile detention centers and correctional schools
for boys, specifically Warwick and Wiltwyck, be-
cause of his delinquent lifestyle and street life of
stealing, fighting, and dabbling in drugs and al-
cohol. He was a charter member of a gang by the
time he was 10. At Warwick, he says, “I was ready
to stay there for a long time and live real good. I
knew how to get along there. I’d had a place wait-
ing for me long before I came. If I’d known War-
wick was going to be as good as it turned out to be,
I would never have been so afraid. As a matter of
fact, I might have gotten there a whole lot sooner.”
Brown’s criminal lifestyle was to be expected
given the often-negative consequences of inner
city life—the Harlem he grew up in was one of the
fiercest inner cities in the United States—but it was
also due to the choices he made. His father, a dock-
worker, frequently beat him and was by no means
a positive example or father figure. His mother, a
good-hearted woman, was always there for him,
but she seemed weak when he needed her the
most. However, his family had some sense of unity,
although there was little income and minimal op-
portunities for the young Sonny, as he was called.
Inevitably, to succeed, Brown turned to the streets,
where drugs, prostitution, and violence dominated
and contaminated the neighborhood, although
he was well aware of the potential consequences.
Brown’s illicit lifestyle took a deep turn when, at 13
years of age, he was shot in the abdomen during a
robbery. This incident became a turning point in
his life. Brown, with the encouragement of a friend
and a school psychologist, abandoned his criminal
behavior, completed high school, and enrolled at
Howard University in Washington, D.C., where the
award-winning novelist TONI MORRISON was one
of his teachers.
Brown wrote about what he knew best: his own
life experiences. He confessed, “I didn’t know any-
thing other than my own life, so that was what I
wrote... .” In Manchild in the Promised Land his
major themes run the gamut from the appeal of
the Nation of Islam (the Black Muslims) in the Af-
rican-American community to homosexuality and
the quest for masculine identity, the significance
of education to black liberation, and conflicts be-
tween southern values and urban inner-city life.
By the end of the book his main character has,
despite the many challenges he faces, empowered
himself, much like FREDERICK DOUGLASS and RICH-
ARD WRIGHT. Unlike “Pimp,” his younger brother
who became a drug addict, Brown transcended,
significantly through education, rather than sank
beneath the cracks and insurmountable odds of
ghetto life.
Not surprisingly, critics view Manchild in the
Promised Land as a 20th-century slave narrative.
According to Sidone Smith, “Manchild is an ex-
posé of the slave system as the slave narrative and
Wright’s Black Boy were exposés of the slave system
of the South. Brown... vividly portrays the brutal
reality of life in Harlem” (157). Brown returned to
Harlem after completing his formal education; he78 Brown, Claude