TO NONACADEMIC READERS: Be forewarned! Don't let the title deceive you. This is not a cute, accessible anthology with writings that would interest the average gay, black man. This is not "Brother to Brother" or "Fighting Words." This is a series of musings from a professor that is clearly trying to impress a tenure review board. TO ACADEMIC READERS: Reid-Pharr gives nine chapters which deal with theoretical questions on race, sexuality, and gender. The title is supposed to scare you in its seeming essentialism. The book is divided into three sections: black, gay, and man; but these are arbitrary. Reid-Pharr's project is to critique obtuse, overly "socially-constructed" academic hyperbabble without returning to played-out identity politics. However, this book is just as theoretically burdensome as any other recent cultural studies. Shockingly, the author never once mentions postmodernism and only discusses modernism. A lot of this book seems borrowed: the grotesque picture on the cover smacks of Mapplethorpe; the raunchy sexual tales are influenced by Delaney; the "I'm a lesbian" line comes from Sedgwick and Francisco Valdes. I usually would say all black gay lit. enthusiasts should buy something like this; but I can't say that this time. This book is going to disappoint many. It reminds me of Hazel Carby's weird "Race Men" book.

Coles'study is ambitious in scope, but it is this ambition which ultimately proves to be his downfall. While he ably sketches out a broad overview of the history of African American writers abroad, the brevity of his study does not allow him to do more than skim across the surface of these rich texts. Perhaps if he had limited his study to Europe or Africa or produced a much longer text, he might have been able to deal more adequately with his subject matter. In addition, the datedness of most of Coles' sources make it obvious that this is merely a superficial update of a 20 year old study rather than one rewritten with more recent critical work by Paul Gilroy and many others in mind. The subject is deserving of a major study. Unfortunately, Black Writers Abroad is not it.

The 1772 publication date of Gronniosaw's _Narrative_ seems to have been recently established by Vincent Carretta in _Unchained Voices: An Anthology of Black Authors in the English-Speaking World of the 18th Century_ (Kentucky, 1996), with the evidence offered on pp. 53-54. The post-1791 editions in which Equiano understandably deletes the wording "My hand is ever free--if any female Debonair wishes to obtain it" after his April 7, 1792 marriage to Susanna Cullen are the 5th (Edinburgh, 1792), the 6th & 7th (both London, 1793), the 8th (Norwich, 1794), and the 9th and last (London, 1794). My source for this information is Vincent Carretta's authoritative Penguin edition of Equiano's _Interesting Narrative_ (1995), pp. 297-297, note 633. A reader from Virginia

Prospective buyers of Mr. Allison's edition of Equiano's autobiography should be advised that although Mr. Allison says that his "edition follows the first American printing . . . (New York, 1791)" and that "the only significant changes . . . are the insertion of paragraph breaks and notes to the text," Mr. Allison does not warn the reader that he's silently combined parts of various editions of the autobiography to form a book Equiano himself never published. For example, if you compare the next-to-the-last paragraph (p. 195), in which Equiano mentions his marriage, to the passage on page 187, where he says his hand is free, you might get the impression that he's saying he's available for adultery or bigamy. But the fault lies not in Equiano, who changed the earlier passage after he added the paragraph about his marriage in 1792. What Mr. Allison gives us is his text, not Equiano's. And he might have mentioned that the New York edition was published without Equiano's knowledge or permission. Readers should also not assume that all "facts" given are true. For example, on page 21, Gronniosaw's book was published in 1772 (not 1770), Marrant's in 1785 (not 1790), and Equiano died on 31 March 1797 (not in April).

The only reason that I own this book is beause I received it for free. Information is sketchy and difficult to find in the book without an index or table of contents. (Subject matter is arranged in alphabetical order). Bottomline - even if you have unlimited money, dont squander your pocket space.