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Mahoganyanais
Regular Poster
Username: Mahoganyanais
Post Number: 27
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, January 29, 2005 - 02:13 pm: | 
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I just heard about this essayist and travel writer from an ad for his upcoming appearance as part of a contemporary writers series sponsored by one of the local universities.
Here's a snippet of a Salon.com article on him entitled, "Does a Black Man Have to be Black?":
Eddy L. Harris has spent years trying to figure out what makes him black, and what makes him an American. This search has taken him down the length of America's most mythical river in a canoe, a quest he chronicled in "Mississippi Solo" (1988), and on a long African journey that left him feeling more American than ever ("Native Stranger," 1992). For his recent book, "Still Life in Harlem," Harris made his home in Harlem, "the alabaster vessel that holds the Blackamerican heart." He discovered a place far from its glorious Renaissance days, a once shining cultural capital now filled with the shards of broken dreams. While he found "there is still life in Harlem ... there is a barrenness to it."
In the most jagged moments of anguish during his two-year stay, Harris was even driven to declare, "I refuse to be black." One such moment occurred in the middle of the night, when Harris was shaken from this sleep by the sounds of a man beating a woman in the street below his apartment.
"In the few moments of my indecision I told myself that enough was enough, told myself that I wanted no longer to be black if this is how black men behaved, told myself that I wanted nothing more to do with a world without beauty in it, and that cared not for beauty. It had been beautiful and joyful once, but this — this man beating a woman — this is what we've let it all come down to: this man beating this woman, the drug dealers lining too many streets in the neighborhood, women willing to sell themselves for a pittance and men willing to buy them, the rats and the roaches, the joblessness, the fatherless children and the mothers who do not care, the far too many people who do not seem to care."
Then Harris slipped on his jeans and T-shirt and went downstairs to confront the woman's attacker. "Perhaps in time I can indeed refuse to be black ... but not this night. This night I am here. This night I am black and I am in Harlem and I have no choice but to be in this moment and make of it what I can." <snip>
Read the complete interview here: http://www.salon.com/jan97/interview970106.html
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Mahoganyanais
Regular Poster
Username: Mahoganyanais
Post Number: 28
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, January 29, 2005 - 02:26 pm: |
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Forgot to add this biographical info. He sounds like a very determined guy:
EDDY L. HARRIS, a product of St. Louis, is the author of four critically acclaimed books, Mississippi Solo, Native Stranger, South of Haunted Dreams, and Still Life in Harlem, all of which partake of memoir, travelogue, adventure tale, and cultural reportage. As USA Today put it: "Eddy L. Harris isn't your everyday tourist. His travels almost always have a purpose, and that purpose is to write about not only what he sees, but what he feels." Harris says that success has not come easy. "After a few false starts and many failures, three weeks snoozing as a marketing rep for IBM, I turned my attention to writing—determined to earn my living as a writer or not at all, and equally determined to prove Toby Wolff wrong" (his writing teacher at Stanford at the time, Toby advised Eddy to think of a different profession; and even suggested buying tools and becoming a plumber.) Much, perhaps, to Wolff's surprise, Harris graduated Stanford and has been writing ever since.
Harris says his is a story of failure and perseverance: failure as a short story writer, failure as a novelist, failure as a screenwriter and as a journalist. In 1985, after ten years of failure, and in "an attempt at passive suicide," Harris canoed the Mississippi River, and thus began his career as a memoirist adventurer. He has since garnered the kind of attention and praise that swirls around the finest writers and finds himself bemused to be called by some "America's premier memoirist and travel writer." The Los Angeles Reader captures his writing: "At every turn, Harris challenges assumptions about race, forcing his readers to examine their own minds ... In thoughtful prose that is deeply personal, Harris rips open the wound of race and lets out the evils festering inside ... A consciousness-raising session on the conundrum of race relations."
For the past four years Harris has been Writer in Residence at Washington University in St. Louis and is currently living in Paris where he is hard at work on a novel which "attempts to link the good life in Paris with the misfortune of those who have it less good--those who live through the lunacy of racialist thinking, the logical extension of which is extermination and ethnic cleansing."
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Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 967
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, February 02, 2005 - 02:00 pm: |
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You guys will not believe this but Eddy Harris may have been here at the Vaughn Cultural Center in St. Louis a few days ago--
A man called and got an interview with the director. The director is new and hasn't got an arts background. He chatted with the man who said that he was an author from St. Louis and living in France and that he wanted to do a reading at the Vaughn.
The director asked him if he'd brought any books with him. The man allegedly said he hadn't. The director--again understand he did not have an arts background--replied that he couldn't very well schedule a reading without looking at some books.
The man left.
The director told me this story. Something funny about it made me kept asking questions about him--finally I went and got a photo off the internet.
http://www.salon.com/jan97/interview970106.html
"Yeah, that's him," the director told me.
Boy. Too bad I wasn't around or I'd have vouched for him.
I guess one should never take for granted that folks will know who you are, eh? |
Mahoganyanais
Regular Poster
Username: Mahoganyanais
Post Number: 34
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, February 02, 2005 - 02:12 pm: |
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That's too funny, Chris. I never heard of him before today, but another local writer told me that his book on Africa was her Bible during her travels there. She's introducing him tonight. I'm looking forward to hearing him. |
Mahoganyanais
Regular Poster
Username: Mahoganyanais
Post Number: 35
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, February 02, 2005 - 02:22 pm: |
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Yikes! I meant to say I never heard of him before this WEEK! |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 968
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, February 02, 2005 - 02:35 pm: |
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Mahoganyanais:
If you get a chance to talk to him ask him if he was indeed the gentleman who had a meeting with the Director of the Vaughn Cultural Center a few days ago and if he was, tell him that the Director apologizes but does not have an arts background and didn't know him and that he would like to talk to him again. |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 969
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, February 02, 2005 - 02:36 pm: |
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Mahogany:
In fact, give him my email
<belsidus2000@yahoo.com>
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Mahoganyanais
Regular Poster
Username: Mahoganyanais
Post Number: 36
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, February 02, 2005 - 02:45 pm: |
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Will do, Chris. |
Mahoganyanais
Regular Poster
Username: Mahoganyanais
Post Number: 38
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, February 02, 2005 - 10:45 pm: |
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Chris, I explained the situation to him, and he chuckled. I gave him your contact info.
He gave a wonderful reading. He read a long passage about his father from one of his early books, and then he read pages from his new manuscript which is all about his father. |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 970
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 03, 2005 - 10:15 am: |
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Mahoganyanais:
Thanx much.
By the way, where did all this take place? |
Mahoganyanais
Regular Poster
Username: Mahoganyanais
Post Number: 40
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 03, 2005 - 11:25 am: |
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University of Pittsburgh's Contemporary Writers' Series
ZZ Packer will be here for it March 16th. |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 973
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 03, 2005 - 11:44 am: |
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I'd advise going to hear Packer if you can (and plead for a full report!) |
Mahoganyanais
Regular Poster
Username: Mahoganyanais
Post Number: 43
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, February 03, 2005 - 01:53 pm: |
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Chris: I'd advise going to hear Packer if you can (and plead for a full report!)
Mah: I'm so there, Chris. I love her short story collection, her voice, her wit. I rejoice at her work and at her success. She's a fellow Yale alum (a year behind me, I think), and I wish I could lie and say "I knew her when..." |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 975
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, February 04, 2005 - 11:05 am: |
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Mahoganyanais:
I just got your name. Mahogany Anais for Anais Nin, right?
Eddy Harris got hold of me. At least we have been able to convey our apologies--treatin' a homeboy dat a way!
By the way, are the Sun Crumbs still holding forth in Pittsburgh? |
Mahoganyanais
Regular Poster
Username: Mahoganyanais
Post Number: 49
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, February 04, 2005 - 11:22 am: |
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Chris: I just got your name. Mahogany Anais for Anais Nin, right?
Mah: Ding, ding, ding! We have a winnah! ;-)
Chris: Eddy Harris got hold of me. At least we have been able to convey our apologies--treatin' a homeboy dat a way!
Mah: Cool! I was worried he wouldn't know what the hell I was talking about. I had explained the situation to my girlfriend who went to the reading with me, and after he was done reading, standing on the stage, and everyone was flowing out to the reception, I said, "Okay, I'm going to go up to him now." And my friend was like, "Go by yourself. I don't know you!" She thought he was going to look at me like I was crazy. But he was cool.
Chris: By the way, are the Sun Crumbs still holding forth in Pittsburgh?
Mah: They hit upon some hard times, but are still around. A buddy of mine, Christiane Leach, is one of the co-founders. Are you familiar with her band, Soma Mestizo? You have ties to the 'Burgh?
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Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 978
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, February 04, 2005 - 12:06 pm: |
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No, I don't have ties to them. I once tried to see if I could hook up with them and do some readings |
Plewis
Newbie Poster
Username: Plewis
Post Number: 3
Registered: 09-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, April 08, 2005 - 05:50 pm: |
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"In the few moments of my indecision I told myself that enough was enough, told myself that I wanted no longer to be black if this is how black men behaved, told myself that I wanted nothing more to do with a world without beauty in it, and that cared not for beauty. It had been beautiful and joyful once, but this — this man beating a woman — this is what we've let it all come down to: this man beating this woman, the drug dealers lining too many streets in the neighborhood, women willing to sell themselves for a pittance and men willing to buy them, the rats and the roaches, the joblessness, the fatherless children and the mothers who do not care, the far too many people who do not seem to care."
With assholes like this, who needs Thomas Dixon?
People, PLEASE.
Harlem always had these same problems. Read Ralph Ellison, writing in the forties:
The most surreal fantasies are acted out upon the streets of Harlem; a man ducks in and out of traffic shouting and throwing imaginary grenades that actually exploded during World War I; a boy participates in the rape-robbery of his mother; a man beating his wife in a park uses boxing "science" and observes Marquess of Queensberry rules...
See what I mean?
I'm sorry: most contemporary black writers just suck. |
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