Written by Roger Goodman contacted me a couple of months ago and asked me if I would be willing to read and review his memoir, Thoughts of a Tribal Elder: One Queerman’s Journey from the Ashes Risen
Roger calls himself a ‘tribal elder’ he’s a gay man/queer man or, as he puts it, “Queerman” that’s been through it all when it comes to the travails of being a part of the gay community and being ill, being addicted and so much more. He documents his life’s journey in a series of essays in this book. It’s not a book that starts with his birth and rolls through the present or even his early coming out years as so many queer memoirs do. Rather, it’s a book that looks at specific experiences and periods in his life and analyzes them through the wider lens of his current perspective.
Goodman chronicles a lot of stuff here. We get everything from what he thinks it means to be gay, through his music, his divinity studies (and the refusal of the powers that be to ordain him), through the AIDS epidemic, living with HIV, drug addiction and so much more. It’s an intense read. At the same time, I have admit; I really struggled with parts of this book.
I’m not a gay man. My life experience in the LGBT community will never even approach mirroring what it means to be a gay man so maybe I’m not the best judge. Still, I can’t help but feel that Roger Goodman paints all the men in the gay community with the same brush. I do realize there was/is a real, very palpable issue with AIDS. I realize too that AIDS and HIV are still heavy duty realities for many of our gay brothers. I know too that metropolitan based gay culture often revolves around sex and drugs. Those last two specifically though don’t encompass all gay men or even most of them. Goodman’s portrait would have you believe that this is the “only” way that it is if I’m interpreting it correctly. In his time and in his experience, yes it probably was, but here he’s writing with a modern view and continuing the same conversation.
I disagree with Goodman on a couple of points, have true heartburn with at least one train of thought (the concept of sex between HIV positive men as a Eucharistic experience… but I’m not an HIV positive man so, what do I know?) and I’m skeptical of a few others. That’s the point though of reading things from someone else’s perspective, isn’t it? We learn from that and, perhaps, expand our viewpoint. He’s entitled to his opinions and his world view. I support his right to express them and I support him as a member of the Queer community. Though I don’t walk away from this book a true believer in all the majick he expoused, I certainly have new perspective and a broader understanding of some of the issues our elders faced.
. In my review, I mentioned that I felt like I’d only gotten 1/2 or maybe 2/3rds of the story. I had found that Dennis had, a year prior to the publication of 
, about his lifelong obsession with dolls, hair, cutting hair and, as he aged, cutting mens hair.
by author Keith Boykin, a well known political columnist and television commentator (CNBC and BET). His book features 44 stories from gay men of color that run the gamut from coming of age as a black, gay male, to coming out to family and to the larger community, to struggles with prejudice not only as African Americans but inside the black community because they’re gay, and inside the LGBT community because they’re not white. Also covered are struggles with religion in the context of its importance within the black community and so much more.
, was the cover…both the art and the title. When I was growing up there were reruns of a black and white television show on in the morning called “Fury”. It was billed as, “The story of a horse and the boy who loved him.” It seemed to be set in the 1940s or 50s in the west. This cover totally took me back to that show.
several years ago, not because I presumed him to be gay, but because I love memoirs and I figured if anyone had an interesting story to tell, it would be him.
“. He hosted the show through two great seasons before ABC pulled the plug. Cooper then moved on to CNN.
, that I can’t begin to do it justice with a simple description. It’s quite a story.
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and it features an introduction by another noted LGBT favorite comic book author, Alison Bechdel.
and I reviewed it for this blog on 
by Fenton Johnson about his life with his partner Larry Rose before Larry was taken by AIDS by in 1990. My friend making the recommendation assured me that if I was touched by the person Gabe became in a novel, I’d be deeply affected by the story of both of these men and of Rose in particular. He was right, I was.
, published in 2004 but we’ll save a review of that for another day.