Among the Bloodpeople: Politics and Flesh

by Thomas Glave

With an introduction by Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa

Included in the 2014 Over the Rainbow list

"A profound compassion for racial and sexual minorities, the oppressed, and the colonized, informs [Glave’s] searing, beautifully evocative collection of essays...He captures the languor and seductiveness of Jamaica...A graceful and original stylist, Glave highlights the marginalized—calling on the descendants of people who toiled for the Empire as slaves and colonial subjects to never forget their past, and, in effect, to those who profit from that past to acknowledge their complicity. Ultimately, his work is critical, yet filled with generosity and compassion."
--Publishers Weekly, starred review

Best Book of 2013 selection, The Airship/Black Balloon Publishing

"Thomas Glave surely is one of the bravest of contemporary authors…He is a fearless truth-teller whose essays in Among the Bloodpeople are fully, unhesitatingly engaged with his and our world."
--New York Journal of Books

"This collection is wide-ranging, moving from the Caribbean (Jamaica in particular) to Cambridge, England, and from poetry to sex to discrimination."
--Library Journal, BEA Editors' Picks feature

"A sensitive, sharp set of intelligences--intellectual, to be sure, but prevailingly emotional, too--reside in the makeup of these essays...these pieces are moulded in resistance, bolstered by history, suffused in poetry: each of them is a delight."
--Paper Based Bookshop blog

"I didn’t know [homosexuals in Jamaica] were disemboweled with machetes. And I didn’t consider one could be poetic about fear and anger and isolation. But the touchingly phrased sentences don’t soften the impact of reading about murder and political corruption. Instead, it eats at you because it makes you attentive to every word, feel the pauses as Glave takes a breath and speaks with the pulse of his heartbeat."
--Reeling and Writhing and Fainting in Coils (blog)

“Glave’s prose is a thing of poetry, passion, beauty, and clarity in its compelling appeal for the space of human love and tolerance. A joy to read.”
--Ngugi wa Thiong’o, author of Dreams in a Time of War

"Glave's voice resonates in the plucked string holding each sentence together, an echo of James Baldwin and Jean Genet; his language carries the full freight of witness . . . His language is seductive and regenerative, critical and humanizing, almost mathematically gauged and encompassing, and it never fails to hold us accountable. But alongside the terror we witness, moments of sheer beauty seethe out of the landscape—not as a balm, but as needful epistles of reflection . . . Glave has done a heroic deed.”
--Yusef Komunyakaa, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Neon Vernacular

"Glave is a gifted stylist . . . blessed with ambition, his own voice, and an impressive willingness to dissect how individuals actually think and behave."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Glave's literary temperament has been described as 'Faulknerian,' and the comparison speaks volumes. He achieves astonishing tonal effects . . . [and] has a poet's way with words."
--The Washington Post

Thomas Glave has been admired for his unique style and exploration of taboo, politically volatile topics. The award-winning author's new collection, Among the Bloodpeople, contains all the power and daring of his earlier writing but ventures even further into the political, the personal, and the secret.

Each essay in the volume reveals a passionate commitment to social justice and human truth. Whether confronting Jamaica's prime minister on antigay bigotry, contemplating the risks and seductions of "outlawed" sex, exploring a world of octopuses and men performing somersaults in the Caribbean Sea, or challenging repressive tactics employed at the University of Cambridge, Glave expresses the observations of a global citizen with the voice of a poet.

Genres: Nonfiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published July 2, 2013

About the author

Thomas Glave was born in the Bronx and grew up there and in Kingston, Jamaica. A two-time New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow, he is a graduate of Bowdoin College and Brown University. His work has earned many honors, including the Lambda Literary Award in 2005, an O. Henry Prize (he is the second gay African American writer, after James Baldwin, to win this award), a Fine Arts Center in Provincetown Fellowship, and a Fulbright fellowship to Jamaica. While there, he worked on issues of social justice, and helped found the Jamaica Forum of Lesbians, All-Sexuals, and Gays."

Reviews

[Raul · Rating 4 out of 5]

It seems to have been forgotten, but beginning in 2008 (when it became clear that Obama and the democrats might win the American election and LGBT rights in the U.S.A. would have some progress, legislative at least, American conservatives took their ideological warfare internationally) monstrous levels of queerphobic fanaticism sprung and spread across the world. It's uncertain how much of the fanaticism was spontaneous and how much was sponsored (by American conservative evangelical organisations such as the Fellowship) but what was certain was the ripples throughout the world in certain countries in the Caribbean and Africa, to Russia and elsewhere. I can clearly remember being in a bus returning, I was still in secondary/high school, to boarding school when the death of David Kato, a Ugandan queer activist who had been brutally murdered, was announced on the radio, and I can never forget the comments that justified and even celebrated this from other passengers. Although now seemingly forgotten this was the reality for years, and still remains the reality although the levels of violence and hatred aren't the same.

Thomas Glave writes in the present and aftermath of this reality and so these essays are charged with urgency to address the situation, specifically in Jamaica. With such boldness, and courage, he writes (even directly addresses) where the bigotry lies. It's the kind of writing I wish I had access to and had read back then, when all was confusion and fear, it would have saved me some years of self-loathing and all the harm that came with that, but I've read it now and I can still recognize the truth that rings throughout.

I particularly loved the piece ‘Meditation (on “Barebacking”)’ which is a meditation of yearning and wanting in the midst of violence rendered beautifully:

“Remembering all that death and shame and fear, but also so much yearning and desire, how can I not say right now with this man (you), or with another, with someone, what I have always most deeply craved was, is, that closeness. Presence. Feeling. Touch. The joy and thrill of being seen, and seen, wanted. Being wanted: not at all easy to experience in this world, not so common—”

With the recent years there's been renewed efforts to pass harsher anti-LGBT laws, in Ghana, in Uganda, in Kenya, and elsewhere. All bills drafted (unsurprisingly) at around the same time (2021 - 2023, after Trump's election loss) and with American conservatives (unsurprisingly) connected to the politicians and processes that were involved with the bills. It passed into law in Uganda. The new pivot turned from the act (sexual) to identity, with the same old arguments of protecting and preserving culture and children, unsurprisingly, again, and so these essays still remain very important and will most likely remain urgent.

[Lucy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a tough book to review, it was by no means an easy read, but that is no reflection on Thomas’s writing style, it is of course due to the subject matter which is most disturbing to say the least.
The thing about the book is that he really delves into the psyche of what it is to be a gay man in Jamaica, which is no easy thing to be, and yet also in talking of how it is in his country. He also touches on those closer to home, how his family reacted, the subtle changes that take place with those closest to him when they come to realise that he is gay, those that loved him for who he was, somehow no longer do…
It is a very well written book and covers a wide range of subjects as he travels between Jamaica, New York and Finsbury Park no less…

[Sunday Kofax]

I come to this book not having read a lot of academic prose on homosexuality, certainly outside the US. I'm glad to have had the chance to read it, and you can take this review to be from a layperson.[return][return]I first page-dipped, flipping through and reading a sentence here and there. I got excited about the prospect of learning about something I don't have specific knowledge of. As I dove in, I realized that the perspective was so strong, so intense, it quickly became difficult for me to continue enjoying. I ended up putting it down.

[willowdog · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a style uniquely his own, Glave's essays on gay love, sex, suicide, writers and writing, the diaspora of Caribbean, and the love of Jamaica (with all of its faults) are pointed and passionate.