Advance Praise for L. Michael Gipson's Collisions
"Gipson's new book "Collisions" is a page-turning wonder! Gipson has revived good ole' fashioned story-telling with sumptuous wit, engaging rhythm, and truly delicious charm. "Collisions" is, without question, awesome-a-la-mode!"
— Lamar Ariel, author of Ready to Male
"L Michael Gipson skillfully takes pen in hand to take us on a journey. L Michael addreses social and cultural conflicts (roulette, conviction, jury duty) as well as issues typical but silenced in gay dialogues (industry, missing, camp and slenderize). Each 'collision' is carefully woven together, presented with such brilliant detail and on point positions that we are driven to turn page after page. I sat down with no expectation, and was THRILLED out of my brain to want to read on and on and on."
— Monet, Soul Music songstress and musician, Essence & Life Size Mirror
"Gipson has eloquently woven symphonic linear notes of the human spirit that reflect the diverse, unique, and oftentimes discarded mirrored reflections of ourselves, and as a masterful conductor and wordsman he's captured the essence and soul of black gay, and bisexual folks, and our quest for love, acceptance, and companionship, and it is with his own spellbinding poetic measure we get a glimpse into his mirror and see how we are all the same."
— Terrance Dean, author, Hiding in Hip Hop, Visible Lives,
Straight From Your Gay Best Friend, and Reclaim Your Power
"…delivered with poignant accuracy, Gipson's insights are both marvelous and deadly. His main gift is in smashing mirrors. What remains are shards, tense tales of the now's, the coulda shoulda woulda been's, the never was's, and the long been gone's."
— Steven G Fullwood, author of FUNNY & The Magician's Assistant's Dilemma
"Gipson's debut collection offers multiple telling of our narratives in the context of darkness/light. Through Gipson's exquisite and honest writing we re-discover that our lived experiences are always already, both. The heaviness of Gipson's writing is at its best when the veneers are exposed. There is an exquisiteness in his orologi story telling, though, that makes striking the messiness of even our daily killings and resurrections. And, the writing shows up brilliantly because Gibson writes as if he knows something about the interiority of BGM. He writes as if he knows me."
— Darnell Moore, writer, activist, professor, Rutgers University
About The Author: L. Michael Gipson
L. Michael Gipson is the descendant of urban and country griots, the progeny of those who shared complex stories decades old, pregnant with laughter to suppress the leakage of ancient tears. He is the survivor of a childhood rich with the human drama and frailties, the victor over poverty, molestation, family abandonment, parental alcoholism, adolescent sex work, absent fathers, dismissive stepfathers, and dangerously homophobic streets. He is a son, a brother, an uncle, a nephew, a cousin, and a beloved grandchild. He is a Black man, a gay man, a man of size, a youth advocate, a public health strategist, a music critic, a lifestyle commentator, a radio personality, and an arts nerd whose laugh can be heard several walls deep. More than all of these things, he is a creative being who’s privileged words as his primary mode of expression and storytelling as his weapon of battle and survival. As a writer and a man, he is what Red Dirt Biz is all about.
From The Publisher: Tim'm T. West
As a publisher who has since 2003 principally focused on publishing my own products through Red Dirt Publishing, I'm honored and proud to have L. Michael Gipson's Collisions: A Collection of Intersections as the first of many works to come that are not my own. Collisions describes a collective of experiences without script, the unspoken interiors, and of the truth that lies in between the known and expected in the world of Black gay and bisexual men and boys.
L. Michael's short stories offer beautifully complicated characters whose lives capture both the particularity black gay experience and universal human experience. The stories in Collisions are brilliant for the multitude ways they tap into the range of emotions that define the tensions between culture, relationships, sex, politics, and spirituality. If the stories are easy to read it is because they tap into the emotions of the reader seeking an empathetic self-resolution through the journey of his characters. These are men you love to hate and hate to love; they are fragile and strong, naïve and conscious, victims and heroes. If Collisions is a challenging read, it is because the collection offers few happy resolutions, just questions at the crux of who we are as human beings trying to make sense of a society where identities are both necessary and restrictive. If you are one who thinks critically about who you are and your place in the world, you will see yourself in these stories.
More specifically, in a society where black gay identity is all too often depicted through its more extreme representations-- either Down Low hypermasculine men OR objectifying caricatures of effeminate men-- L. Michael offers identities at the intersection of class, gender, sexual orientation, and spirituality that speak to as wide a range of experiences as I have encountered in black gay literature. L. Michael has been honing this collection for more than a decade, a testament to the patient critical lens needed to offer a collection of shorts that is not just unique in characterization and experience, but grounded in some very critical and philosophical questions about what it means to be black, gay, American, human. If those on the margins of society offer the best lens through which to examine an America at the crossroads, then Collisions offers as real a depiction of people "making do" with a range identities in conflict. Collisions is a work about identity in flux and that will change the way readers see themselves. As reader of literature, it satisfied my desire to encounter a range of stories not bound by the demands of major publishing companies whose products are dictated by quantity of books sold, not quality of stories written. There are stories here I have been hungry for. I imagine that L. Michael Gipson's debut will have a lot to offer both fans of literature as well as scholars looking for creative ways to think critically about the intersections of identity.
