Best-selling
writer E. Lynn Harris can still remember the first time he
realized he was poor.
His family had
been invited to the housewarming of a well-to-do family in
his hometown of Fayetteville, Ark., and Harris, then a young
boy fresh from an afternoon of playing outside, was
sitting in the living room when another guest remarked
on his appearance. For much of the visit, he tried
desperately to tuck his bare, dusty feet underneath the
sofa.
It was those
childhood memories that helped motivate his drive for
success in later years.
''I didn't grow
up in the kind of environment that my characters grew up
in, or the kind of environment that I live in now,'' the
52-year-old author says. ''It was one of the things
that I always aspired to.''
His fame has made
him a part of a more privileged world, and his success
can be partly attributed to showing his readers a world with
which they were previously unfamiliar: the secret
world of professional, bisexual black men living as
heterosexuals.
This week Harris
is back after a two-year hiatus with his 10th novel, Just
Too Good to Be True. In some ways the book
returns to some of his typical themes -- family,
relationships, fame -- but Harris also takes on new
territory, focusing for the first time on a straight
relationship.
His writing falls
into several genres, including gay and lesbian fiction,
African-American fiction, urban fiction, and so on. And with
4 million copies in print, the books are also best
sellers.
Harris's latest
book took him four years to write, and while it was a
challenge to write about straight characters half his age,
he did not see the story as a risk.
''I'm a writer,''
Harris says. ''There are always going to be these
categories that people will try to use to describe me, but I
should not be put into a box.''
Just Too Good to Be True tells the story of
21-year-old football star Brady Bledsoe; his mother,
Carmyn, a successful Atlanta beauty salon owner; and
Brady's cheerleader love interest, Barrett Manning.
To help with the
writing, Harris leaned on students from the writing
classes he taught at his alma mater, the University of
Arkansas, where he plans to return in the fall after
his book tour. (He also has a 21-year-old son who is a
senior at Arkansas.)
''I had a
classroom of Bradys every day,'' Harris, says. ''I would
listen to their vernacular, watch what they did.''
That he can now
tell a different type of story can be attributed to his
success, his narrative ability, and the evolution of
attitudes about black gay culture since the time of
his 1994 debut, Invisible Life. The book was a
coming-of-age story that dealt with the then-taboo topic of
the ''down low,'' or bisexual black men living as
heterosexuals.
''If you were
African-American and you were gay, you kept your mouth shut
and you went on and did what everybody else did,'' he said.
''You had girlfriends; you lived a life that your
parents had dreamed for you.''
He sold his book
at beauty salons, pushing the story to a black middle
class that rarely saw itself in fiction. And he brought up
homosexuality, a topic that had been difficult to
discuss in black society. Yet Harris, who felt
compelled to write Invisible Life, was not living as
an openly gay man and could not acknowledge the
parallels between the book and his life.
''People would
often ask, 'Is this book about you?' I didn't want to talk
about that,'' he said. ''I wasn't comfortable talking about
it. I would say that this is a work of fiction.''
Harris' home is a
reflection of his personality: eye-catching, but not
flashy. Behind the modest brick facade of his north Atlanta
town house is a meticulously decorated yet welcoming
home.
Dressed in a
white and blue button-down shirt and crisp white slacks,
Harris is something of a contrast to his ornately decorated
living room, which is bathed in red and channels a
romantic, almost European elegance. But Harris, like
the room, is impeccable and has left no detail
unattended, from his manicured hands to his closely cropped
hair and goatee.
He is warm,
low-key, and engaging. Absent is the drama present in so
many of his novels.
His approach has
been an essential part of his formula. Invisible Life
and books that followed helped his readers -- especially
black women -- feel less isolated, said Mark Anthony
Neal, a professor of African-American and women's
studies at Duke University.
''Women were
ashamed to tell a friend before E. Lynn Harris presented a
world that reflected what they were going through, and it
made him a superstar,'' Neal said. ''And in that weird
kind of way that art imitates life, he got folks to
begin to wrap their head around homosexuality in the
black community in ways that we had been reluctant to do
before.''
Harris said the
courage readers got from the book empowered him to be
honest about himself. He continued to tell stories dealing
with similar issues, to tell black middle-class
readers about people they knew, but who were living
secret lives.
For years he was
alone in exposing the ''down low,'' but the phenomenon
exploded into mainstream culture in 2004, a decade after
Invisible Life. That year, J.L. King's
On the Down Low: A Journey Into the Lives of
'Straight' Black Men Who Sleep With Men hit
bookstores, and the author appeared on Oprah Winfrey's
TV show.
Harris said he
was glad to have started the dialogue.
''Am I upset that
other people came along and capitalized on something I
started? I say no,'' he says. ''It wasn't something I
created.''
His readers will
likely be glad to follow Harris away from the ''down
low,'' said Herndon Davis, spokesman for the National Black
Justice Coalition, a civil rights organization that
pushes for greater equality for black gays, lesbians,
and transgender individuals.
''People are
tired of hearing about the 'down low,' for one thing,''
Davis said. ''And people are becoming more aware of who we
are.''
Which frees up
Harris to be who he is. Case in point: The sports fanatic
couldn't help showing off to visitors his favorite room in
the house. As he hurried excitedly toward the
basement, his face lit up as he entered another red
room, this one plastered with sneering hogs, pennants,
photographs, and other memorabilia from his alma mater.
In that moment,
he wasn't black. He wasn't gay. He was E. Lynn Harris,
Razorback. (Errin Haines, AP)
