Freedom in this Village is the first book to chart the course of black gay male literature over the past thirty-five years. Beginning at the birth of Gay Liberation with the Stonewall Rebellion of 1969, editor and New York Times best-selling author E. Lynn Harris collects sixty entries, many never previously published. Fiction and poetry is matched in eloquence by nonfiction pieces, including essays and excerpts from memoirs, novels, biography, and autobiography. A new short story by E. Lynn Harris is featured, along with original work by twenty-five other authors. Among the roster of established writers are James Baldwin, Samuel R. Delany, Melvin Dixon, Peter J. Gomes, George C. Wolfe, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Hilton Als, Keith Boykin, Randall Kenan, Thomas Glave, James Earl Hardy, Brian Keith Jackson, Essex Hemphill (from whose poetry the title Freedom in this Village was borrowed), and the latest generation of writers who contribute fresh perspectives that choose to affirm rather than negate the interconnections between sex, race, and masculinity.