In I SAY A LITTLE PRAYER by E. Lynn Harris, Harris takes a sympathetic look at the difficulty of reconciling homosexuality and faith in the black church.
Thirty-eight-year old Chauncey Greer classifies his heft sexual appetite as "basically bi with a gay leaning;" but also needs a personal relationship with God. Once a member of a boy band called Reunion (his deeply felt love affair with fellow bandmate Sweet D precipitated its breakup), Chauncey now owns a successful Atlanta-based greeting card company. Chauncey is a regular at the progressive Abundant Joy Baptist Church, where Pastor Kenneth's inspired preaching reignites his dreams of a singing career. After Chauncey sings a soul-stirring solo at church, the pastor invites him to perform at an upcoming revival led by the fundamentalist Bishop Upchurch and his vindictive wife Grayson. But Chauncey's friends plan to boycott the revival because of the Upchurches' gay-bashing, and Chauncey must decide between his passion for singing and his personal identity-a decision complicated by the reappearance of a figure from his past. E. Lynn Harris illuminates a divide in the black church while exploring the universal theme of broken love.
E. Lynn Harris is a former IBM computer sales executive and a graduate of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. He quit his sales job to write his first novel, Invisible Life, and, failing to find a publisher, he published it himself in 1991. Anchor published Invisible Life as a trade paperback in 1994 and thus his career as an author was "officially" launched. He is the author of nine other books: Invisible Life, Just As I Am, And This Too Shall Pass, If This World Were Mine, Abide With Me, Not a Day Goes By, Any Way The Wind Blows, A Love of My Own and his autobiography, What Becomes of the Brokenhearted
August
2006
