We have known the characters, perhaps by different names. Weve lived the experiences maybe in different times and places. We have felt the joys and pains, and sang the songs. However, the author has taken all of this and weaved a beautifully soulful and colorful story of reflection, love, discovery, and truth in a backdrop of the black gospel university choir. …and let the Choir say Amen!", engaging from the first page, invites the reader on a dynamic and rhythmic journey back to their roots, to the place where it all began, to a place called home. Sometimes we have to go home, to find our way again!" - Anthony Tony" Farmer, founder - Visions of the Heart Spiritual Life Coaching and Healing Ministry
(PRWEB) October 30, 2004 -- "And Let the Choir Say Amen" By Caesar Brunswick; Reviewed by James Roberts
"And Let the Choir Say Amen" is Caesar Brunswicks new novella that examines the lives and loves—past and present—of the members of a gospel choir in an HBCU (Historically Black College/University). Arthur Wilson, the protagonist, travels back and forth in time to live challenges both artistic and romantic.
Arthur is a same gender loving African American man who has intense physical and emotional relationships with both men and with women. This is in the face of the homophobia that many African American fundamentalist churches especially espouse. Brunswick repeatedly points out that some of those churches choir members and pulpit members regularly nevertheless engage in homosexual acts.
The AIDS pandemic makes its devastating presence known as Brunswick surveys a gospel music scene that, in real life, continues to witness the deaths of too many of its most talented performers.
In a story that spans the quarter of a century that begins in the late 1970s to the presumable present Brunswick offers neither justifications nor condemnations for Arthurs ambiguous sexuality. He treats Arthurs love interests with an even hand. A re-ignited affair with a male minister who is conflicted about his sexual orientation is given equal sympathy with a chaste, loving reunion with a female paramour from Arthurs college days.
Brunswick places these, and other, actions in the context of a gospel music scene where religiously fervid amateurs blend seamlessly with polished professionals. It is a scene where sincerity and hypocrisy exist side-by-side. Great acts of love contrast with extreme pettiness. Gay and straight characters exist in a universe where they are flawed, but valuable, human beings.
Caesar Brunswick gives us an extended peek into a time, a place and an atmosphere that rarely converge in a single work of fiction.
James Roberts is host of the Positive Living" radio program on WHAT (1340 AM, Philadelphia, The Voice of the African American Community)
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