Review: "Visible Lives" Proves E. Lynn Harris's Influence Lives On

How important was E. Lynn Harris to the genre of gay African American popular fiction? So important that he basically created the genre. A few such books existed before Harris, but it's hard to think of a writer who had achieved anywhere near the same level of success or influence.

Harris died unexpectedly in 2009 at the tragically young age of 54, but now three writer-friends of Harris, Terrance Dean, James Earl Hardy, and Stanley Bennett Clay, have contributed to a "tribute" book to Harris. It's comprised of an essay from each author exploring Harris's influence on their own work as well as a novella written in styles reminiscent of Harris's: basically, breezy, accessible gay romance.

The gimmick is that Harris himself actually appears as an actual (minor) character in all three stories.

Both Dean and Clay have written lively, readable page-turners very much like Harris's work. In Dean's story, an older man unlucky in love finds himself drawn to his sexy young intern, eventually wondering if he just might finally find true love in his unexpected arms.

In Clay's story, another older man unlucky in love ends up making what is basically a sex tourism trip to the Dominican Republic, in order to take advantage of the attractive, but economically disadvantaged men there. Once again, the main character finds romance in unexpected arms, but Clay adds a deeper subplot where the main character is forced to confront the issue of whether or not these men are being exploited — something made all the more interesting by the fact that it's other African Americans who are doing the exploiting (or not).

Indeed, it's wonderfully refreshing to read solidly-written gay stories from a non-white perspective. It's easy to forget just how over-represented white gay characters are in most books, TV, and movies.

Clay and Dean also have pretty funny senses of humor and can both write a pretty steamy (and explicit) sex scene.

If there's a flaw in both their stories, it's that they have a tendency to resort to extremes: every new man that comes along is the hottest person the main character has ever seen, every new love is skyrockets and firecrackers.

James Earl Hardy takes a less accessible approach to his story, about ex-lovers reunited during a blackout in New York. Truthfully, I've never been wild about Hardy's dense writing style, and I wasn't a fan of his contribution here, which seemed to consist mostly of run-on dialogue.

Still, the mere existence of all three of these three writers is proof of E. Lynn Harris's influence. Most of the work here does his legacy proud.