out stores and houses, [and] mothers and babies
shot up on their own porches” (32). Belton writes,
“Today, Newark is a ghost of a city” (1995, 223).
Although he has not published a second novel,
Belton, proudly embracing his homosexuality
like ESSEX HEMPHILL, stands in the vanguard with
black male writers who “chorus a black masculin-
ist movement, speaking their names, demanding
their right to self identification, describing their
lived experiences and challenges of oppression
while confronting a racism so covert and insidi-
ous” (1995, 225), while celebrating their successes
and victories. He does so in the book he edited,
Speak My Name: Black Men on Masculinity and
the American Dream (1995). His fiction has been
anthologized in Calling the Wind: A Twentieth
Century Anthology of the African American Fiction,
edited by CLARENCE MAJOR, and Breaking Ice: An
Anthology of African American Fiction, edited by
TERRY MCMILLAN.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Belton, Donald. Almost Midnight. New York: Beach
Tree Books, 1986.
———, ed. Speak My Name: Black Men on Mascu-
linity and the American Dream. Boston: Beacon
Press, 1995.
Wilfred D. Samuels
Bennett, Hal (1930– )
Hal Bennett was born George Harold Bennett on
April 21, 1930, in Buckingham, Virginia; he was
reared and educated in Newark, New Jersey. At age
16, he became a feature writer for the Newark Her-
ald News. He served in the U.S. Air Force as a writer
for the public information division during the Ko-
rean War (1950–1953). Taking advantage of the
G.I. Bill, he moved to Mexico and attended Mexico
City College. There, Bennett became a fellow of the
Centro Mexicano de Escritores. In 1961, Obsidian
Press published his books The Mexico City Poems
and House on Hay. Doubleday published his Wil-
derness of Vines (1966), which won him a fiction fel-
lowship to the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference and
which Bennett, in an interview, described as influ-
enced by the musical arrangement of Beethoven’s
Ninth Symphony. He next published The Black
Wine (1968) and Lord of the Dark Places (1970). In
1970 Bennett was selected most promising writer
by Playboy magazine for his short story “Dotson
Gerber Resurrected.” He received the Faulkner
Award in 1973. His other books include Wait until
the Evening (1974), Seventh Heaven (1976), and
a collection of short stories, Insanity Runs in Our
Family (1977), all published by Doubleday.
Always a man who likes to distort tradition,
order, and standards to show that deeper mean-
ing and understanding dominate life and that one
need only be willing to search to find them, Bennett
authored numerous titles under the pseudonyms
Harriet Janeway and John D. Revere. In 1979 New
American Library published This Passionate Land
(Janeway) and Pinnacle published the five-set as-
sassin series (Revere): The Assassin (1983), Vatican
Kill (1983), Born to Kill (1984), Death’s Running
Mate (1985), and Stud Service (1985). In 1983
CALLALOO awarded Bennett its annual award for
fiction. His work has also been published in the
Virginia Quarterly Review and Negro Digest (BLACK
WORLD). In 1997 Turtle Point Press republished
Bennett’s Lord of Dark Places.
Bennett often worked within the ideological
framework of the BLACK AESTHETICS MOVEMENT.
Characters in his novel constantly move from one
location to the next searching for freedom. Ac-
cording to James Miller, many of Bennett’s char-
acters shuttle back and forth, representing the
saga of African Americans who sought a new life
through migration from the South to the North
and from the rural country to the urban, indus-
trial city. With that migration comes new ways
of adapting and adjusting to new communities,
people, customs, and beliefs. In his novels, Ben-
nett challenges traditional Christian symbols and
images by presenting protagonists who exercise
agency in their lives to create valued, valid, and
empowered individuals.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Miller, James A. “Bennett, Hal.” In The Oxford Com-
panion to African American Literature, edited by
William L. Andrews, Frances Smith Foster, andBennett, Hal 43