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Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance
Gay Rebel of the Harlem Renaissance: Selections from the Work of Richard Bruce Nugent is a gathering of Nugent's best writings and imagery. It includes "Sahdji," originally published in The New Negro; "Smoke Lilies and Jade," originally published in FIRE!!; excerpts from the unpublished "Geisha Man," "Pope Pius the Only," originally published in Challenge; previously unpublished sketches of Langston Hughes, Carl Van Vechten, L. H. Alexander Gumby, Gloria Swanson, and other Harlem Renaissance personalities; "Lunatique," an excerpt from a later unpublished novel; and numerous other gems.
Thomas H. Wirth's insightful introduction places Nugent in the context of his times, illuminating the implications of his open expression of same-sex desire, even as his many Harlem Renaissance compatriots chose to keep their sexual attraction to other men more or less hidden.
Price: $23.00 plus $3.00 shipping.
Written between 1928 and 1933, and never before published, Gentleman Jigger is a wickedly revealing satire of the leading lights of the Harlem Renaissance.
An important addition to the literature of the period, the novel is the story of Stuartt, Bohemian scion of Washington D.C.'s African American elite. Openly homosexual (as was the author), Stuartt joins the younger intellectuals of Harlem in defying authority figures, both black and white, at the notorious "Niggeratti Castle."
After the group disperses, Stuartt moves to Greenwich Village and becomes sexually involved with a young hoodlum. Charming and audacious, Stuartt eventually seduces one of gangland's top bosses, Orini, before his friendships with the young heiress Wayne Traveller and Orini's "moll" Bebe set them all spinning in a whirlwind of jazz-age glamour and celebrity . . . that ends in an ironic denouement.
Price: $6.50 (64% off list) plus $3.00 shipping
In 1926, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, Aaron Douglas, Richard Bruce Nugent, Gwendolyn Bennett and John P. Davis created FIRE!! Intended as a literary quarterly, FIRE!! ceased publication after the first issue for financial reasons, despite its stellar contents. Bruce Nugent's contribution, "Smoke, Lilies and Jade," was the first publication by an African American writer on an explicitly homoerotic theme. Nugent also contributed two drawings to FIRE!!
Copies of the original are excessively rare. You can purchase this superb reproduction for $18.00 plus $3.00 shipping.
Limited Edition of FIRE!! Signed by Nugent in 1982
There are a few copies left of this signed, limited edition of FIRE!! Each copy is numbered and enclosed in a handsome, custom-made, archival box.
Size of the edition: 120 copies
Price: $200 plus $10 shipping