Adrian Stanford Black and Queer
Item
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Title
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Adrian Stanford Black and Queer
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Description
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Adrian Stanford (d: 1981) - No online obituary or birth certificate about the poet exists. Internet records suggest that his writings were most prolific in the 1960s and 1970s (Julenetrippweaver, n.d.).
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Adrian Stanford’s Black & Queer manuscript was not widely published during his lifetime, making it a rare artifact in Black LGBTQ+ literary history. For wider distribution niche publishers like Good Gay Poets (Better World Books 1977) made the manuscript into the first book by an out, Black gay poet published in the United States (Never by Itself Alone: Queer Poetry, Queer Communities in Boston and the Bay Area, 1944-present, n.d.); but there are no online book reviews. His manuscript predates and foreshadows the work of later writers like Essex Hemphill, Marlon Riggs, and Joseph Beam, who would more famously document Black gay life in the 1980s and 1990s. Stanford’s work is a frontier voice in queer Black literature—a mix of protest, praise, and poetry for those at the margins of the margins.
The Black & Queer Table of Contents reads like a soulful roadmap that targets the emotional, political, and spiritual dimensions of Black gay life in 1970s America. Stanford begins with identity and defiance—titles like “In the darkness, f_ck me now” and “Black and Queer” declare defiance without apology. He then shifts into themes of Black love, spirituality, and grief, expressed in pieces like “sacrifice” and “for donald thomas williams,” before closing with reflection works such as “I shall meet you by the sea”. The progression feels purposeful, guiding oneself through the contours of a Black queer psyche—from resistance to yearning.
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Rights
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http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-RUU/1.0/
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Type
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Text
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Creator
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Stanford, Adrian
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Date
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1977
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Language
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eng
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Spatial Coverage
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Boston, MA
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Contributor
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John J. Wilcox, Jr. Archives at William Way LGBT Community Center
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Extent
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40 pages
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Identifier
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Ms. Coll. 58
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Is Part Of
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LGBT poetry, prose, music, and photography chapbooks, 1965-2017
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Subject
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Poets, Black
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Queer theory
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Gay men--Sexual behavior
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Homophobia
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Male homosexuality
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Coming out (Sexual orientation)
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Gay people--Identity
