Essex Hemphill Quotes

Now We Think Now we think as we fuck this nut might kill us. There might be a pin-sized hole in the condom. A lethal leak. We stop kissing tall dark strangers, sucking mustaches, putting lips tongues everywhere. We return to pictures. Telephones. Toys. Recent lovers. Private lives. Now we think as we fuck this nut might kill. this kiss could turn to stone.

I’m dying twice as fast as any other American between eighteen and thirty-five This disturbs me, but I try not to show it in public.

The Black homosexual is hard pressed to gain audience among his heterosexual brothers; even if he is more talented, he is inhibited by his silence or his admissions. This is what the race has depended on in being able to erase homosexuality from our recorded history. The "chosen" history. But the sacred constructions of silence are futile exercises in denial. We will not go away with our issues of sexuality. We are coming home. It is not enough to tell us that one was a brilliant poet, scientist, educator, or rebel. Whom did he love? It makes a difference. I can't become a whole man simply on what is fed to me: watered-down versions of Black life in America. I need the ass-splitting truth to be told, so I will have something pure to emulate, a reason to remain loyal.

American Wedding In america, I place my ring on your cock where it belongs. No horsemen bearing terror, no soldiers of doom will swoop in and sweep us apart. They’re too busy looting the land to watch us. They don’t know we need each other critically. They expect us to call in sick, watch television all night, die by our own hands. They don’t know we are becoming powerful. Every time we kiss we confirm the new world coming. What the rose whispers before blooming I vow to you. I give you my heart, a safe house. I give you promises other than milk, honey, liberty. I assume you will always be a free man with a dream. In america, place your ring on my cock where it belongs. Long may we live to free this dream.

I love myself enough to be who I am.

Many people do interpret "black men loving black men" solely in terms of a sexual, romantic affinity, and love. But what I meant was love in the sense of friendship, community, family, and fraternity, which was far more important, in nurturing me as a black gay man, than the love of a particular lover who is white. It's more important because for black people in this country it's difficult to exist, to flourish, to find sustenance and spiritual strength when you're totally surrounded by whites, or when the source of your support is solely from whites. There are things that white people can't understand, don't feel, and don't know no matter how much they love you. (Marlon Riggs, in an interview with Ron Simmons)

Why should Africa's descendants base their lives and their future on the Koran, or the Bible? With all due respect, the Koran is not an artifact of African culture, it is Arabian. And the Bible in its present form was given to us by white slavemasters. Indeed, both books were introduced to Africa by people more interested in increasing their wealth than in Africa's well-being. Europeans and Arabs enslaved Africans. We don't owe them anything, so why should we be subservient to their books? ('Some thoughts on the challenges facing black gay intellectuals' by Ron Simmons)

When he was alive, Marlon Riggs, activist, scholar, and filmmaker, used to insist in conversations with me and Essex [Hemphill] that “black men loving black men was the most revolutionary act.” To Marlon this statemen t was an affirmation of the importance of self-love. He believed that a self-hating individual black male, irrespective of his sexual preference, would never be able to love another black male. While I agree that anyone mired in self-hate cannot love anyone, I used to tell him that the “most revolutionary act” black men could make was to deal psychoanalytically with their childhoods.” For it is in childhood that so many black males, gay and straight, come to fear masculinity and manhood. This fear is often based on painful and abusive interaction between fathers and/or male parental caretakers and sons.