Thinking it over.
Photo by Donald Andrew Agarrat, 2003.
Since April 2003, I have been toiling away at co-editing small book called THINK AGAIN. THINK AGAIN is a short collection of essays and narratives by Black (gay/SGL/fill in blank here_____) that creatively and critically addresses HIV risk and prevention for Black men who practice same sex desire. THINK AGAIN is published jointly by the New York State Black Gay Network (NYSBGN) and AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA). The publication will be out this week. In fact, I am joining the co-editor, Colin Robinson, and five of the contributors – Herukhuti, Kevin Trimmell Jones, G. Winston James, Roderick A. Ferguson, and Marvin K. White – this week in Syracuse, New York, for it’s official launch at the NYSBGN’s annual training meeting.
I am excited. I want to see the baby. Want to hold her in my hands and see what she looks like, smells like and how she will contribute to the current discourse around Black gay men and HIV risk and prevention. She’s due back from the printer any day now. I can’t wait!
Here’s a little from the press release (trust me, you’ll get more in the future):
Eleven contributors, new and seasoned, present creative, critical narratives that provoke readers to “think again,” about how HIV prevention, has (or in many cases, has not) impacted their lives in healthy ways. In addition to the six writers mentioned above (including yours truly), THINK AGAIN boasts the talents of Charles Stephens, Khary Polk, Vincent Woodard, Kevin Quashie, and Tim’m West. The volume also features the beautiful art of famed artist Lyle Ashton Harris whose latest work Memoirs of Hadrian is being exhibited at CRG Gallery in New York City.
Readers are encouraged to travel into the sometimes radically difficult personal spaces presented in the essays, short story and poem that comprise THINK AGAIN. For HIV prevention workers, THINK AGAIN is an invaluable tool, for doing effective outreach. The volume showcases the realities that inform black life from a variety of perspectives—sexual, cultural, racial and spiritual.
“We see THINK AGAIN as a vital tool to engage the creative community in restoring some autonomy, creativity and innovation in our community responses to HIV risk,” says editors Colin Robinson, Executive Director of the New York State Black Gay Network, and Steven G. Fullwood, project director of the Black Gay and Lesbian Archive. Robinson, along with George Ayala, Director of Education at AIDS Project Los Angeles, has formed a unique bi-coastal collaboration among two very different organizations. In THINK AGAIN’s introduction, the publishers write that each organization is “thinking again” and indeed acting on how to do more effective outreach to a population decimated by the HIV/AIDS.
THINK AGAIN is not your usual HIV risk prevention literature. Instead of telling black men what to do to avoid catching the virus, each essay, short story and poem lays bare a glimpse into each author’s own struggles with HIV/AIDS as academicians, artists, outreach workers, and perhaps most poignantly, as same gender loving men.
THINK AGAIN hopes to help in building a community discourse or a vision around HIV risk and prevention that is uniquely cast for black men who are intimately and sexually involved with other men. Each piece is fresh, thought provoking, well written and easily accessible for the average reader. The editors of THINK AGAIN hope that the volume sparks excitement among community organization workers, critical thinkers, funders and men in the street. Cover to cover, THINK AGAIN is a collection of different, unconventional ideas about HIV and its effects on the world of MSMs.
And so there it is. Will update the world on MONDAY!