Words to Our Now: Imagination and Dissent

by Thomas Glave

“As a black male who is also gay, I and my brothers and our black lesbian sisters are considered ‘disposables’ throughout the world, throughout time past and present, in our own black communities and in white ones. This is clearly the case in Jamaica and most other Caribbean nations, and it is certainly true in the supposedly more ‘progressive’ United States. What will the force of this virulent hatred mean for our futures, and who will decide once again which of us is disposable? will we stand together when the time comes for us to face that machine-gun fire? All of us? Beyond our prejudices?” 

In these lyrical and powerful essays, Thomas Glave draws on his experiences as a politically committed, gay Jamaican American to deliver a searing condemnation of the prejudices, hatreds, and inhumanities that persist in the United States and elsewhere as both official policy and social reality. Exposing the hypocrisies and contradictions of liberal multiculturalism, Glave offers instead a politics of heterogeneity in which difference informs the theory and practice of democracy. At the same time, he experiments with language and form, blurring the lines between fiction and nonfiction, to provide a compelling model of creative writing as a tool for social change and humanity. 

From the death of black gay poet Essex Hemphill to the revelations of abuse at Abu Ghraib, Glave puts forth a deeply moral and ethical understanding of human rights to make vital connections across nations, races, genders, and sexualities. 

Thomas Glave is assistant professor of English at SUNY Binghamton. He is author of Whose Song? and Other Stories.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, The United States Of America

280 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Thomas Glave was born in the Bronx and grew up there and in Kingston, Jamaica. A two-time New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow, he is a graduate of Bowdoin College and Brown University. His work has earned many honors, including the Lambda Literary Award in 2005, an O. Henry Prize (he is the second gay African American writer, after James Baldwin, to win this award), a Fine Arts Center in Provincetown Fellowship, and a Fulbright fellowship to Jamaica. While there, he worked on issues of social justice, and helped found the Jamaica Forum of Lesbians, All-Sexuals, and Gays."

Reviews

[Read By RodKelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book took so long to read! Glave is a writer who pulls every ounce of feeling he can out of words: the way he constructs a sentence, the form, his virtuosic vocabulary, the way his ideas develop, the sheer inventiveness of his imagination... It's impossible to breeze through his writings. He cover so much ground in this collection: from memoirs about his childhood and connection to the Caribbean to thoughts on the ugliness of politics in the U.S. (and abroad) and violations of human rights. He is an undeservedly underread writer--everything he presents is just brilliant and unique!

[Colin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked what Glave had to say, but ultimately his somewhat dramatic, wordy writing style didn't work for me. I prefer the accessibility of Robin D.G. Kelley on this subject.