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Gary In Your Pocket: Stories and Notebooks of Gary Fisher (Series Q) Hardcover – July 18, 1996

by Gary Fisher (Author), Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (Editor)

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The incandescent African American writer Gary Fisher was completely unpublished when he died of AIDS in 1994 at the age of 32. This volume, which includes all of Fisher’s stories and a generous selection from his journals, notebooks, and poems, will introduce readers to a tender, graphic, extravagant, and unswervingly incisive talent. In Fisher’s writings the razor-sharp rage is equalled only by the enveloping sweetness; the raw eroticism by a dazzling writerly elegance. Evocations of a haunting and mobile childhood are mixed in Fisher’s stories with an X-ray view of the racialized sexual vernaculars of gay San Francisco; while the journals braid together the narratives of sexual exploration and discovery, a joyous and deepening vocation as a writer, a growing intimacy with death, and an engagement with racial problematics that becomes ever more gravely and probingly imaginative.
A uniquely intimate, unflinching testimony of the experience of a young, African American gay man in the AIDS emergency, Gary in Your Pocket includes an introduction by Don Belton that describes Fisher’s achievement in the context of other work by Black gay men such as Marlon Riggs and Essex Hemphill, and a biographical afterword by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick.

Gary In Your Pocket: Stories and Notebooks of Gary Fisher (Series Q)

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Product Details

Series: Series Q
Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Duke University Press Books (July 18, 1996)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0822318040
ISBN-13: 978-0822318040
Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1.1 x 9.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 1.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,692,627 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #6477 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Specific Demographics > Gay & Lesbian
- #15083 in Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Regional & Cultural > United States
- #35517 in Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Criticism & Theory

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Exploitative, reenforcing one of the oldest stereotypes of African American homosexual men

By A Careful Reader on April 21, 2013

Format: Paperback

Let's face it: this posthumously published volume came out after Gary Fisher's death and without any indication (besides a brief relay of his feelings about it from the editor) of how he would have thought of this particular view of his life and work. Consequently, it is really the vantage point of the editor, a pioneer of queer studies who never really investigated the work of gay and lesbians of color in any substantive way, except for this deeply exploitative book. It's exploitative because it reenforces one of the oldest stereotypes of African American homosexual men: that most are "snow queens" who are entirely dependent on white men for white male approval even unto lusting after white men in pathological, masochistic, self-effacing ways; that they are divorced entirely from other blacks out of a kind of clownish self-hatred; that they sexualize everything relentlessly (including sex in public) and then scream or squeal about it endlessly...these pernicious stereotypes weren't even actually true about Gary Fisher himself, who I knew. How much of this book is selectively edited? I'd love to see the actual journals...It's an outrage that this book appears in the absence of so many truly pioneering black gay writers who don't get this attention in published form. What a rush to judgement on the part of this series--what a sign of a passing fad performed on the backs of the image of black gay men. This book is a shameful act by the editor and the publisher and all the men (black and white) who endorsed the book.Read more ›

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I knew Gary

By S. Farlow on May 25, 2007

Format: Paperback

I knew Gary when we both attended UNC in the early 80's. If you read his journals, you will recognize me as "John" or "Johnny". I am a white gay man. I came out of the closet in 1981 and Gary was one of the first people in the UNC "community" that I met...we had a German class together. We became great friends (platonic) and eventually roommates...for a time he was my best friend. As referenced in his journals, Gary moved to the San Francisco area in 1983, and I moved out there in 1984. We continued our friendship there. I moved back to the south in 1986, but we kept in touch, until I discovered that he was HIV+ in 1989...I tried to contact him with my support but we lost contact after that. Just recently, after a random google I discovered that he had died and that this book had been written. I bought it immediately.

The book, which makes for spicy reading, only presents a small side of the Gary Fisher I knew...although he may have explored the darker sides of his sexuality after we left contact. But I know that the content of his journals was profound and spritual. True, he did not embrace his race...most of his friends were white...he considered himself a gay man, not a black man.

The author of this book chose only to highlight the sexual aspects of Gary's journals...I imagine this was intentional since she is somewhat of an expert on sexuality and most of her work concerns this, but the reader must remember, the content of this book all comes from Gary's journals, and as pornographic as it seems, much of it may only be imaginary. Gary even admitted to me that he didn't mind "enhancing" his stories sometimes.

I had mixed feelings reading this book..in some aspects there was some personal closure as to what had happened to him...Read more ›

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Art is meant to provoke, but this was a brotha's real life?!

By A Customer on January 1, 2003

Format: Paperback Verified Purchase

Gary Fisher was a graduate student, fledgling writer, and Black gay man living in the Bay Area before his death in the mid-1990s. This book consists of two parts: a sample of short stories and poems and an autobiographical sketch based upon his diaries.
I don't know whether to thank the author, editor, and publishing company for challenging me and most other readers or to throw this book into an incinerator. One reviewer in the gay press called this writing "outre" and I wholeheartedly agree. I am thoroughly surprised that this book is available at non-pornographic outlets. Rafael Campo, Don Belton, and Eve Sedgwick all have raved about Fisher or helped this book come into fruition. I admire all three of those writers and enjoy their work, so I have no idea what they were thinking here. E. Lynn Harris' fans would roll over and die if they read this book! It's one thing for art to push the envelope, but an actual Black gay man made all the poor and crazy choices that Gary Fisher made. I had to work hard to keep my eyes in their sockets trying to get through this book.
While the fiction and poetry demonstrate the potential Fisher had, they are worthless. Things don't really get started until the autobiographical portion begins. This book invokes every "disrespectable" aspect of some gay people's lives; the Far Right could have a field day with this text. The shock value and goriness is very reminiscent of David Wojnarowicz's "Postcards from America" and Eve Sedgwick, the editor, basically admits as much in her conclusion. Adding racial matters into the mix only intensifies the uncomfort I felt. Issues such as dangerously unsafe sex practices, size-queeniness, Uncle Tom-ism, coprofilia, anonymous and public sex all come up and readers will be thoroughly shocked at how.Read more ›