If you haven’t seen the documentary I Am Not Your Negro, please run out and do so. As Shannon Cain wrote with regret in July 2016, “There exists no trace of James Baldwin in the village … His half-demolished house bears no plaque… Here in the place he considered home, it appears that this great American literary and civil rights icon has disappeared from history.” I call The Ada Decades a love story for that reason – it’s about two women enduring together and building a life over time, despite the odds.Īnd more about Baldwin, whose writing is rightfully enjoying a revival: Efforts are underway to save the house in St.-Paul-de-Vence, France, where he lived for the last seventeen years of his life, and turn it into a retreat for writers and artists. It’s about working through problems and plowing through bad times as well as celebrating the joyous moments. There’s the tender romance in the early stages of “girl meets girl,” but a relationship over the long haul is so much more than that. I re-read a lot of Baldwin’s nonfiction work as my novel was unfolding, especially Nobody Knows My Name, and I took one of the epigraphs for the book from him: “Love is a growing up.” I felt that so aptly summarized what I had learned about long-term relationships. I won’t give away what happens, but things get tense at the fictional Central Charlotte Junior High. The work of James Baldwin (1924-1987) figures prominently in this chapter of my book it becomes the subject of attempted censorship by parents at Ada’s school. Browne calls her on it, and she retracts her concern – but then wants him to know she’s not like “other whites.” A closeted lesbian, she’s read James Baldwin’s novel about an affair between two men in Paris.īaldwin on the streets of Harlem/AP photo DuBois, and James Baldwin, will play badly with the conservative white parents in the school. She worries that some of his choices, including books by Ralph Ellison, W.E.B. in 1970, has a run-in with a new teacher, Robert Browne – one of only two black faculty members in the school – about a book order.
In this excerpt from my historical novel, The Ada Decades, Ada Shook, a white school librarian in Charlotte, N.C. Browne said, with a thin smile that suggested he might not hold a grudge. “One white and one black.” The volume had made the rounds in their gay circle before ending up, tattered and well-read, on a high shelf in the bedroom closet. “It’s about two men who have an affair,” Cam had explained excitedly. Cam had brought the novel Giovanni’s Room home from her trip to Washington, D.C. Baldwin,” just before he reached the library door. Or she could have told him about the early days of integration at Central, but she had done so little-just interrupted one bullying incident. She could have used the example of Miss Ruthie to explain away her cautious behavior, but it seemed like too elaborate a story, offered too late. Ada needed this young man to know she wasn’t like other whites, the ones who touted their Confederate ancestors or acted like Jim Crow was still in force. They’d gotten off on the wrong foot, and if Cam found out, there would be hell to pay. The June 1969 riots at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Sheridan Square, are generally credited as the start of the modern LGBT rights movement. Even at the seediest bars, queer folks could meet each other for friendship and love, finding community when they might have feared they were alone.Īs Burford notes, bars as community institutions laid “the groundwork for future activism.” For example, at Julius, a gay-favorite bar located on West 10 th Street in New York City, gay men staged a “sip in” in 1966 to challenge a state law that prohibited serving alcohol to “disorderly” people-and just being gay was considered “disorderly” conduct. In the above scene, which takes place in 1962, Ada goes (reluctantly) with her gay friend Twig to The Hornet’s Nest, one of several bars in Charlotte to “serve as ad hoc gathering spaces for the gay community,” according to Charlotte historian Josh Burford.īefore there were LGBT community centers, conferences, high school and college associations, bookstores, and choruses, bars served an important function in the lives of queer people. The plot of my new novel, The Ada Decades, covers seventy years in the lives of LGBT people in Charlotte, N.C. “I reckon they’ll be as scared to see me as I am to see them,” Cam replied. “And what if you run into someone from school?” Ada had asked. The place seemed seedy, dangerous, with an entrance down a dark flight of stairs.
Both women and men frequented it, and Cam had accompanied Auggie and Twig there many times, against Ada’s advice. It wasn’t a homosexual club so much as a place where gay people gathered while the management turned a blind eye. Twig drove her to The Hornet’s Nest, a bar in the basement of an old hotel in town.