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beingjada's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
fast-paced
4.0
tiffanis29's review against another edition
5.0
I've read about 5 of Harris' books before reading this memoir. I enjoyed it!
shelfaddiction's review against another edition
2.0
After reading this book, my view of the author really changed. Not in a good way....read it if you want, but know that reading this memoir could very well shaking your head...like "wow"...I have to admit, I had read every single book by E Lynn Harris, BUT after reading this book, unfortunely, I didn't purchase any of his new releases.
shannanhicks's review against another edition
5.0
Far and away the best memoir I have ever read. I love his fiction and miss his voice greatly. But this was so well-written and no-holds-barred that I felt that I was in some of the situations with him. Mr. Harris is gone, but his legacy and what he has done for the literature of our time will endure.
lpm100's review against another edition
5.0
Book review
What Becomes of the Broken Hearted
E. Lynn Harris
5/5 stars
"The world through the eyes of an overlooked fraction of humanity."
This marvel-of-memory is a neat little book. (p.115--
Harris seems to remember the name of every single person that he has ever met. All the way down to the songs that he was listening to on a particular day 30 years before the publication of this book.)
It's definitely something a bit more than a your typical Done To Death Coming Out Story, because that's not all of the book, nor even most of it.
Many things set this apart:
1. Black people (be they African, American, Caribbean) do have in common the cultural trait of EXTREME homophobia. What might it be like to grow up around people this way?
How else to explain a black man that would have a same-sex encounter, and then immediately beat, slur, and eject his partner from the car? (p.88)
2. The author is very Southern.
He had to work hard in later life to lose his accent after he spent enough time being laughed at for being a country bumpkin.
There's also a lot more homophobia in The South (p.102).
3. Harris is a very long-suffering person; Nonetheless, his treatment is even handed and somehow he manages to escape the bitterness that I see in black people who have something to say about their formative years.
a. There are the Genuinely Bitter, such as Clarence Thomas (He grew up in an all black/Gullah speaking/ Afrocentric environment. But, his experiences created a lot of lingering bitterness that bled over into his own autobiography.)
b. There are the Manufacturedly Bitter-- like a lot of black people who didn't actually grow up around other blacks. (Ibram X. Kendi grew up around all white people, and Colin Kaepernick is a mulatto that was actually *raised* by them. But, being angry is expected and a sign of being cool and conscious.)
The fact that Harris is neither of these two is such a breath of fresh air.
4. In spite of it all, he seems to be a man of faith (p.257).
*****
If reading a book is to live "Des vies possible," then what life do we live by following Harris on his journey?
1. That of a battered stepchild. (And it happens a lot more often than most people know. 52% of children that are slaughtered by a parent are killed by a step parent.)
2. The son of a battered mother.
It is certainly not the first time that a woman deliberately gravitates toward men that beat her and her children, but I can think of extremely few examples where it is told from the perspective of the children.
3. An aesthete, black American style. (He uses so many color words that ONLY black people know.)
a. "Red-boned" (p.14)/"high-yellow" (p. 63) /"light-skinned" (p.64) "blue-black" (p.88)/"waffle brown" (p.100)/"passing" blacks (p.122).
b. He sure remembers exactly what everybody looked like and how beautiful they were--when they were.
It becomes such an issue in the book, that Harris comes across as downright superficial. (I almost think this series of bad relationships that he had was his comeuppance for being so shallow.)
4. A person who is getting enough experience with both sexes (for purposes of this review, there are only two) in order to find out what he likes. (p.51, etc).
Harris wrote a lot of best-selling books about that topic convincingly, precisely because it appears that he actually lived what he wrote. (p.113.... he admits his own experiences were the inspiration for "Invisible Life.")
5. A black person who lived through the time - - not too long ago - - when divorce of black couples was rare and blacks had a higher marriage rate even than whites. (p.29).
6. A black person who will tell the truth about intra-racial color prejudice (pps. 33, 131) -- Black people call it "colorstruck," and it is very common that a lot of black people will only consider "redbones" for romantic partners.
7. Lives the well-worn trope of a gay man falling in love with a Down-Low/ otherwise unavailable guy. (DL guys show up INCESSANTLY in this book. In every single chapter.)
8. Harris shows us the life/psyche of a person with masochistic tendencies, as well as their tendency to actively seek out abusive people. (The details of the love triangle in chapter 10 were just.... gobsmacking.)
This is the gay analog of a case that we have seen a thousand times: a woman passed over a perfectly normal Man to find that one that smacks her around.
9. He shows us what it is like to be a self-published author and claw his way to fame on a self-published book. (It's not common, and it is even less common for people to write about how they were able to pull it off.)
Verdict: Recommended at the used price.
What Becomes of the Broken Hearted
E. Lynn Harris
5/5 stars
"The world through the eyes of an overlooked fraction of humanity."
This marvel-of-memory is a neat little book. (p.115--
Harris seems to remember the name of every single person that he has ever met. All the way down to the songs that he was listening to on a particular day 30 years before the publication of this book.)
It's definitely something a bit more than a your typical Done To Death Coming Out Story, because that's not all of the book, nor even most of it.
Many things set this apart:
1. Black people (be they African, American, Caribbean) do have in common the cultural trait of EXTREME homophobia. What might it be like to grow up around people this way?
How else to explain a black man that would have a same-sex encounter, and then immediately beat, slur, and eject his partner from the car? (p.88)
2. The author is very Southern.
He had to work hard in later life to lose his accent after he spent enough time being laughed at for being a country bumpkin.
There's also a lot more homophobia in The South (p.102).
3. Harris is a very long-suffering person; Nonetheless, his treatment is even handed and somehow he manages to escape the bitterness that I see in black people who have something to say about their formative years.
a. There are the Genuinely Bitter, such as Clarence Thomas (He grew up in an all black/Gullah speaking/ Afrocentric environment. But, his experiences created a lot of lingering bitterness that bled over into his own autobiography.)
b. There are the Manufacturedly Bitter-- like a lot of black people who didn't actually grow up around other blacks. (Ibram X. Kendi grew up around all white people, and Colin Kaepernick is a mulatto that was actually *raised* by them. But, being angry is expected and a sign of being cool and conscious.)
The fact that Harris is neither of these two is such a breath of fresh air.
4. In spite of it all, he seems to be a man of faith (p.257).
*****
If reading a book is to live "Des vies possible," then what life do we live by following Harris on his journey?
1. That of a battered stepchild. (And it happens a lot more often than most people know. 52% of children that are slaughtered by a parent are killed by a step parent.)
2. The son of a battered mother.
It is certainly not the first time that a woman deliberately gravitates toward men that beat her and her children, but I can think of extremely few examples where it is told from the perspective of the children.
3. An aesthete, black American style. (He uses so many color words that ONLY black people know.)
a. "Red-boned" (p.14)/"high-yellow" (p. 63) /"light-skinned" (p.64) "blue-black" (p.88)/"waffle brown" (p.100)/"passing" blacks (p.122).
b. He sure remembers exactly what everybody looked like and how beautiful they were--when they were.
It becomes such an issue in the book, that Harris comes across as downright superficial. (I almost think this series of bad relationships that he had was his comeuppance for being so shallow.)
4. A person who is getting enough experience with both sexes (for purposes of this review, there are only two) in order to find out what he likes. (p.51, etc).
Harris wrote a lot of best-selling books about that topic convincingly, precisely because it appears that he actually lived what he wrote. (p.113.... he admits his own experiences were the inspiration for "Invisible Life.")
5. A black person who lived through the time - - not too long ago - - when divorce of black couples was rare and blacks had a higher marriage rate even than whites. (p.29).
6. A black person who will tell the truth about intra-racial color prejudice (pps. 33, 131) -- Black people call it "colorstruck," and it is very common that a lot of black people will only consider "redbones" for romantic partners.
7. Lives the well-worn trope of a gay man falling in love with a Down-Low/ otherwise unavailable guy. (DL guys show up INCESSANTLY in this book. In every single chapter.)
8. Harris shows us the life/psyche of a person with masochistic tendencies, as well as their tendency to actively seek out abusive people. (The details of the love triangle in chapter 10 were just.... gobsmacking.)
This is the gay analog of a case that we have seen a thousand times: a woman passed over a perfectly normal Man to find that one that smacks her around.
9. He shows us what it is like to be a self-published author and claw his way to fame on a self-published book. (It's not common, and it is even less common for people to write about how they were able to pull it off.)
Verdict: Recommended at the used price.
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