Ceremonies Book

I recently found out about Essex Hemphill while I was frontlisting up-coming titles. In case you also didn't know, he was a black, gay poet and activist in the 80s and 90s who died from AIDS in the mid 90s. I found out that one of his most well known works was Ceremonies and of course, it's out of print. But my library has it WHAT UP.

It definitely took me forever to read this book because I have book ADD and because of all the essays dispersed through out the collection. I enjoyed most of the essays, but some were harder to slog through. But really, it made it a more interesting way to read the poetry because I'd read all these poems about crazy powerful shit like being black and gay in the U.S. in the 80s and 90s, plus other heavy subjects such as the black nurse who worked with the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment (go ahead, look it up) and a woman who chopped up her son to save him from demons. Hemphill's poetry is full of the raw imagery of sexual acts and violence, yet he always seems to add beauty or a sense of urgency. I don't know what I'm saying. All I'm saying is there were so many poems that I just had to look up from my book and nod and think, "well, fuck." Ya know?

Anyway. So many intersections in Hemphill's work — race & sexuality, obviously, but also gender and class. Not to mention the violence against and within the black community and the violence against and AIDS epidemic within the queer community. He really hits on so many important issues.

I really wish this book weren't out of print because it should be taught in queer studies classes and a new biography of Hemphill (Hold Tight Gently) just came out a few years ago. So much of his work is still relevant and fucking important today. We're still dealing with most of these issues 20 years later.