Caribbean Queer: Thomas Glave's Among the Bloodpeople

Increasingly important in international intellectual circles, Thomas Glave has been the MLK prof at MIT and a visiting fellow at Cambridge. After stunning readers with his story collections Whose Song? and The Torturer's Wife, the O. Henry- and multiple Lammy-winner now returns to nonfiction in Among the Bloodpeople: Politics and Flesh [Kindle]. Lest you worry this one isn't gay enough, the book opens with a frank negotiation of barebacking. From the bedroom to the public square, he considers the "risks and seductions of 'outlawed' sex" and he personally confronts Jamaica's prime minister on his bigotry and homophobia. PW praises the "searing, beautifully evocative collection of essays" and Glave's "profound compassion for racial and sexual minorities, the oppressed, and the colonized." Yusef Komunyakaa likens his work to James Baldwin's and Jean Genet's, and the Washington Post writes, "Glave's literary temperament has been described as 'Faulknerian,' and the comparison speaks volumes. He achieves astonishing tonal effects . . . [and] has a poet's way with words."

Glave is also the editor of the award-winning queer anthology Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles featuring Reinaldo Arenas, Audre Lorde, Michelle Cliff, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, and thirty-three other authors.

Last week David McConnell introduced Glave at BGSQD.