Ceremonies: Prose and Poetry [Paperback]

Essex Hemphill (Author), Charles Nero (Introduction)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1573441015 | ISBN-13: 978-1573441018 | Publication Date: May 9, 2000 | Edition: Second Edition

Ceremonies offers provocative commentary on highly charged topics such as Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs of African-American men, feminism among men, and AIDS in the black community.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

As a gay African American acutely aware that he straddles two beleaguered subcultures all too frequently themselves at odds, Hemphill--author of two previous volumes of poetry and editor of the anthology Brother to Brother --strives to bridge the gap in this collection of strongly felt, surely drafted poems and essays. Often explicit, the poems range from hauntingly erotic lyricism--"I am lonely for past kisses, for wild lips certain streets breed for pleasure"--to the belyingly dulled cadences of a dramatic monolog in the voice of a "Colored nurse" complicit in the notorious Tuskegee Institute syphilis experiments. The essays also roam wide and deep. Whether Hemphill is persuasively comparing the reasoning of a psychiatrist's antihomosexual polemic to the soon-hollow rush of cocaine or describing his grandmother's reaction to his poems--"Essex, do the au thorities know what you're writing about?"--he makes passionate common sense. This is urgent, fiercely telling work.
-Thomas Tavis, San Francisco P.L.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Publisher

Cleis Press proudly announces Ceremonies, a new edition of the landmark collection of verse and commentary by one of the most provocative African American gay authors since James Baldwin. Winner of the 1993 American Library Association's Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Book Award, Ceremonies tackles cultural controversy with remarkable force and clarity. Whether he is addressing love between men, AIDS in the African American community, racism among white gay artists, coming home or coming out, Hemphill's insights give voice to a generation of men silenced by fears of reprisal and rejection.

Born in Chicago in 1957, Essex Hemphill was raised in Washington, D.C. before settling in Philadelphia as a poet, writer, and activist. His earliest work appeared in Earth Life (1985) and Conditions (1986), however, it was Joseph Beam's groundbreaking anthology of gay African American writing, In the Life (1986), that launched Hemphill into the literary world.

Following Beam's AIDS-related death in 1988, Hemphill assumed editorial responsibilities of the planned sequel, Brother to Brother, which later won a Lambda Literary Award in 1991. Hemphill's own collection of writings--many of them addressing controversial topics such as the sexual objectification of black gay men, homosexuality in the African American community, and intergenerational sex-- appeared the next year under the title Ceremonies, winner of the 1993 American Library Association's Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Book Award.

Hemphill reached perhaps his widest audience through film. Beginning in 1985 with the Marlon Riggs documentary Tongues Untied, Hemphill and his work appeared in a series of movies, including Looking for Langston (1989) and Black Is/Black Ain't (1995). Commenting on Hemphill's impact on the cultural movement among African American gay men of the 1980s, Riggs remarked, "No voice speaks with more eloquent, thought-provoking clarity about contemporary Black gay life than that of Essex Hemphill."

Yet his work also speaks to women across lines of sexual orientation. In his introduction to the Cleis Press edition of Ceremonies, critic Charles I. Nero writes, "I am reminded just how much Hemphill was indebted to politicized black women when I hear in his work echoes of Ntozake Shange, Barbara Smith, Audre Lorde, and bell hooks." Indeed, these feminist influences resonate in poems such as "To Some Supposed Brothers", in which Hemphill writes, "We so-called men, we so-called brothers wonder why it's so hard to love our women when we're about loving them the way America loves us."

Hemphill's work additionally appears in Gay & Lesbian Poetry in Our Time, The Road Before Us, and Erotique Noire/Black Erotica, as well as having been published in The Advocate, Essence, Callaloo, and The James White Review among others. He died of complications related to HIV/AIDS in 1995.

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: Cleis Press; Second Edition edition (May 9, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1573441015
• ISBN-13: 978-1573441018
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #431,881 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #61 in Books > Gay & Lesbian > Literature & Fiction > Literary Criticism

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spare and emotionally powerful, July 24, 2001

By 

Eclectic Reader (NYC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ceremonies: Prose and Poetry (Paperback)

I don't remember when I first encountered Essex Hemphill,( all I recall is that I heard him at some poetry reading) but from the start I found his talent overwhelming. His dynamic writing captivated my imagination and has inspired part of my committment to articulating Black lesbian/gay experience. I am particularly struck by how few words it took for him to drive home his powerful points. A spare, but spiritually and artistically charged wordsmith, the literary world lost a giant when he passed. I simply adored this fine gay brother whose writings showed him to be a strong, loving and insightful spirit! BUY THIS BOOK!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Unselfish Gift, July 23, 2003

By 

Mecca Egypt (Gardena, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ceremonies: Prose and Poetry (Paperback)

"I have nothing to lose tonight" -- the line that starts it all. "Ceremonies" by the late Essex Hemphill is a collection of the poet/essayist/activist's remarkable prose and poetry culled over his many years of writing.

A DC native, Hemphill includes many of his experiences coming-of-age and living in the nation's capital all of which are detailed and brought to life through his rich and deeply-profound poetry. My favorites include "Heavy Breathing" -- which addresses the need we have for love and the misguided steps we sometimes take along the way. In the poem, he talks about his experiences roaming the halls of bathhouses "in search of Giovanni's Room" and the fatal killing of a middle-aged woman in a public park. In addition, I was struck by "In the Life." The poem, with its calming yet reassuring tone, is a gay man speaking to his mother about his lifestyle -- "Mother, do you know I roam alone at night? / I wear colognes, tight pants, and chains of gold, as I search for men willing to come back to candlelight / I'm not scared of these men though some are killers of sons like me. / I learned there is no mercy for men of color, for sons who love men like me." His poetry is rich with detail and his experiences are ones you can feel even if you've never experienced them for yourself. It's an adventure uninhibited by structure or convention.

Like many SGL brothers, I was introduced to Essex Hemphill when he appeared in Marlon Riggs groundbreaking PBS documentary "Tongues Untied." Many of the poems found in Ceremonies appear in the documentary including his famous poem "Homocide" -- "Grief is not apparel. Not like a dress, a wig or my sister's high-heeled shoes. It is darker than the man I love who in my fantasies comes for me in a silver, six-cylinder chariot."

With all of his words, I found identification and a narrative voice that reflects me and my experiences. Hemphill speaks with erudite intelligence, but none of it is pompous or hard-to-ascertain. Ceremonies challenges the conventions of what it is to black, what it is to be gay, what it is to be both and how one operates in such parameters. It touches on subjects that are still not addressed in the mainstream, even by countering the "sacred cows of gay culture." Hemphill exposes the hypocrisy and the cogs in the homo-hate machine fostered by the white-centered, patriarchal gay mainstream media. ("We have to be there for one another and trust less the adhesions of kisses and semen to bind us.")

The prose of Ceremonies is on-target and carefully assembled. From his deconstruction of the popular "homosexuality-as-antiblack" rhetoric being pumped by certain prominent black intellectuals (with the gem, "If Freud Were A Neurotic Colored Woman") to his graphic accounts of an out-of-the-closet exchange by two middle-aged black men on a public bus (with its shocking finale). Hemphill's book is definitely a page-turner. I found myself re-reading many portions over and over, not wanting to put it down.

The accounts are not only identifiable to just black gay men, they are profoundly human and transcendental. His words give voice to the marginalized, the misunderstood and the unspoken, muffled denizens of our era. I strongly recommend this book to any person who is "in the life" or anyone who would like to hear the selected experiences of SGL black men in contemporary America vocalized in a fascinatingly powerful way. Hemphill succumbed to AIDS complications in 1995, but his ideas and gifts continue giving in this and other works. A must read.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rite/Right/Writing, May 6, 2006

By 

A Howdle (United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ceremonies: Prose and Poetry (Paperback)

This has to be one of the most significant books on human rights...not just gay issues! Hemphill was responsible for supporting and bringing into the light many Black gay/gay Black writers, and doing so unselfishly. Of all the gay Black writers of his generation he is probably the most creative. This book is an important record of an incisive intelligence and a true human being. His poetry, ranging from brief lyric to complex sequence, is evocative and accomplished (a pity that it remains overlooked by White gay anthologists!)His essays read like finely-tuned, emotional short-stories, especially "Miss Emily's Grandson Won't Hush His Mouth". Ceremonies also contains probing attacks on racism and key thoughts about Mapplethorpe and the representation of the Black male. Essex Hemphill possessed a comprehensive political mind that embraced race issues, gender issues and class issues. In Ceremonies, his voice often rings out angrily in the name of human equality. It is a powerful voice that supports the vulnerable with concern and tenderness. A work of great honesty.