Marlon Jam: ‘I unrwent gay exorcism Pentestal church Jamai’ | Marlon Jam | The Guardian

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To fd themselv, and for safety, many gay and trans people choose exile.

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MARLON JAM: ‘I UNRWENT GAY EXORCISM PENTESTAL CHURCH JAMAI’

* marlon james gay *

Jamain novelist Marlon Jam, wner of the Man Booker Prize 2015, wanted to alter his sexualy “more than anythg” his youth and unrwent a gellg relig rual to try to “drive out the gay”, he is to expla a rad terview on was only when the wrer eventually turned away om formal relign and left the Caribbean that he was able to fully accept his homosexualy and even wre about . As Dert Island Discs’ latt staway on BBC Rad 4, Jam tails the extreme evangelil exorcism, or “gay cure”, he endured at a Pentestal church wrer, who earned lerary fame wh his third novel A Brief History Of Seven Killgs, had thrown himself to relign to f wh Jamain society and tells Lren Laverne he did not realise he was gay. ” Quick rep: When Robert Eubanks, a whe man of Harris, Texas, lled the police on his iend John Geds Lawrence Jr., a whe, gay fifty five- year-old medil technologist, and mutual iend Tyron Garner (black), was bee he noticed that Lawrence and his on‑and-off aga lover had h off way too well, and while he went out to get soda, he jealoly surmised that they were gettg on.

You don’t have to be gay to see the ripple effect of Lawrence. Texas paved the way for gay marriage and, wh , curly enough, a wave of gay men who would have disapproved of both Lawrence and Garner. He found this judgment le wh the famo homosexual agenda, an abstract ncept that seemed spng om a fake document, like a Protols of the Elrs of faggotry.

He laid out as “the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists directed at elimatg the moral opprobrium that has tradnally attached to homosexual nduct. ” This is important bee even the wake of gay marriage, and homosexuals votg for Tmp, even world-famo gay stars are still beg bashed and beaten, and many other world-famo people have been chg back to that time when they uld still get away wh beg publicly homophobic. Speakg of civil rights, the Supreme Court rolled back on protectns the very same week approved gay marriage.

MARLON JAM: X-MEN SAVED ME AS A GAY TEENAGER

The Man Booker Prize–wng thor explas why Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together is the “only effective pictn of a gay relatnship” on-screen. * marlon james gay *

Bakers are takg to the urts for the right to not bake k for same-sex weddgs, funeral directors are refg gay rps, and for an admistratn that me wh the help of so many homo-lns, the rollback agast protectns of LGBQ and, particular, trans people has been alarmg. I left Jamai to save my life, but ntrary to the nnotatn immediately raised by uplg “Jamai” and “gay” the same sentence, I was only fleeg myself—or, rather, a versn of myself tent on killg me.

This versn of myself uldn’t image a place where I uld hold another man’s hand for more than four sends, uld never even image admtg to beg gay the first place. No gay person nng to Ameri fools himself to expectg a untry cked out rabow lors or that you n’t be gay-bashed New York Cy.

Note that those three words are all abstractns, and gay Jamains younger than me are far more terted pursug them their own untry. I was one of the nerds and the gay kids – and the ol kids gave me hell. They thought he was gay, and that he worshipped the vil or somethg, both of which were perfectly fe by me.

MARLON JAM PRAIS A GAY CEMA CLASSIC

A book about Bob Marley, told by everyone but Bob Marley – the ve of Gay Tale or Jam Ellroy, Marlon Jam’s Booker wner brgs a dozen petg voic * marlon james gay *

"When asked earlier this year if intifi wh the gay character his novel, the murro, lerature-quotg gangster Weeper, he told a Telegraph reporter:"I don't know if any of me found s way to that. But was very important to me that there were gay characters the book - to reflect the gayns and hypocrisy Jamai.

When you grow up a homophobic untry, you're stg on a timebomb. The Caribbean natn's homophobia is notor, and while Jam was able to fd a way to get out, many more are not as fortunate.

MAN BOOKER PRIZE WNER MARLON JAM REVEALS HE WAS GIVEN EXORCISM BY JAMAI'S 'EX-GAY' MOVEMENT

I had never set foot a gay bar whout paranoia phg me back out.

MARLON JAM SAYS HE WAS SPERATE TO ‘DRIVE OUT THE GAY' WH EXORCISM

Durg Gay Pri week, Alex and John-John dragged me to one lled Camp, which was rated wh dis balls and drawgs of octop tentacl. Jam, who was raised Jamai but now liv the Uned Stat, me out as gay a piece for The Tim Magaze.

Jam’s novel, which revolv around an assassatn attempt on the reggae star Bob Marley, expos some of the homophobia for which Jamai and other parts of the Caribbean have bee known. This hatred is rooted the legacy of the lonial laws of the Brish Caribbean, which crimalized sodomy, and rerced by the powerful fluence of anti-gay a queer transgenr woman om another Caribbean island, the Commonwealth of Domi, I found that Mr.

MAN BOOKER PRIZE WNER MARLON JAM WAS TORTURED BY ‘EX-GAY’ EXORCISM: VIDEO

In much of the Caribbean, beg transgenr is simply nflated wh beg gay; I was terrified of beg ostracized at bt and physilly asslted at worst. Rad hosts exprsed “regret” that he was queer, while others reportedly bshed off his beg gay as a edorial the Jamai Observer asked if was necsary for Jamains to be exile to wre well, yet, credibly, failed to exame the reason for Mr. Jam’s exile: his fear of what would happen if he were to live openly as a gay man.

ROXANE GAY AND MARLON JAM EXPLORE HIS AIN MYTH-SPIRED ‘BLACK LEOPARD, RED WOLF’

Jam, who are queer — eher the ternal exile of livg a lie at home to avoid ostracism or asslt, or the external exile of fleeg home orr to fally be Oroz, a gay Belizean who mounted the first legal challenge to an anti-sodomy law the Caribbean, is practilly exiled his own home. He leav his hoe only for brief trips, which he fac anti-gay slurs om passers-by, and has to fortify his home wh six locks every time he the hoe of the Jamain activist and wrer Dadland Maye was burned down, and he was attacked by men wh guns, Mr.

Jam’s novel through the character of Weeper: A gay gangster om Jamai who pretends at first to be heterosexual, Weeper mak peace wh his beg queer only when he travels to Caribbean, to be sure, is not uniformly hostile to . You’d thk wh the rise of Donald Tmp the US, Mare Le Pen France, the newly energized Neo-Nazi and KKK movements, and wh people om all over the world (but particularly Europe) sudnly embolned to be public wh their racism, anti-Semism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and xenophobia, that now would be the perfect time to raise the banner high for diversy. We have diversy panels and ve wrers of lor, perhaps Roxane Gay (who has long lled out the l tablishment on this hab, and who spired me to wre this piece), or Junot Diaz, or an Indigeno Amerin and/or Atralian so as to not ignore origal peopl.

*BEAR-MAGAZINE.COM* MARLON JAMES GAY

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class="body__ner-ntaer"><figure data-ttid="IameEmbed" class="IameEmbedWrapper-sc-dRedg cjyRVU iame-embed"><div data-ttid="IameEmbedContaer" class="IameEmbedContaer-hptgUZ fXVBaX"><div class="IameEmbedAspectRatWrapper-hFVJps BKpgQ"><iame class="IameEmbedContent-cMdiev csnuAY IameEmbedContent lazyload" height="90" width="100%" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-orig allow-popups" tle="Embedd Frame" data-src=" allowfullscreen="" allow="toplay *; encrypted-media *; clipboard-wre; toplay; fullscreen; picture--picture"></iame></div></div></figure><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">Fifteen years ago, when Marlon Jam was workg on his first novel, he requted an exorcism. He was his early thirti, livg Kgston, Jamai, workg as a graphic signer and ocsnally producg photo shoots for mic magaz. He had attend Sunday school as a child, wh his brothers, the nearby town of Portmore, where his fay lived a neighborhood populated by doctors and civil servants. His parents worked the police force. His mother, a sweet and stubborn woman, rose to the rank of spector; his father, a brash but melancholy man, left the force and beme a lawyer. Both were rears: his father favored Shakpeare, and his mother loved O. Henry. When Jam was five, other kids started llg him a sissy, and he retreated to ics and books. He liked Greek mythology bee everyone seemed to be naked. After readg “Ltle Hoe the Big Woods,” he cid that he wanted to wre. He wrote plays—one was a Jamain revisn of “Crella”—and he drew ics, wh shape-shiftg monkey men and telepathic hero. After readg “Tom Jon,” at age twelve or thirteen, he filled a notebook that belonged to his father wh diary entri the style of Henry Fieldg.</p><p class="paywall">At Wolmer’s Tst High School for Boys, classmat lled him Mary, and he kept a distance om his more popular olr brother, to spare him embarrassment. He beme iends wh a girl named Ingrid, who attend Wolmer’s Tst High School for Girls, and who, like him, believed that Jamai was too small. They talked about the new-wave and Amerin pop rerds they heard on FAME FM, and together they ma a sardonic and punchy ze lled <em>Rum</em>. Jam began lockg himself his bedroom and tape-rerdg his efforts to sound mascule, repeatg words like “bredren” and “boss.” Sex between men is illegal Jamai—the law is unenforced now but remas wily supported. Shortly before Jam’s eighteenth birthday, Hurrine Gilbert flattened Jamai, leavg the island whout power for months. One night, on a battery-powered rad, he heard “Sweet Child O’ Me,” by Guns N’ Ros, for the first time. The bridge ma him sob. Where do we go now? he thought, and kept thkg for years.</p><p class="paywall">At the Universy of the Wt Indi, Jam fell wh an arty crowd who liked llege rock and hip-hop as much as he did and didn’t ask why he never dated. After graduatg, he got a job as a pywrer for a Kgston ad agency. He and Ingrid ma regular trips to Miami to go clubbg, and on one of those trips he went to an adult vio store and bought a VHS tape lled “Dreams Bi-Night.” He returned to the store on subsequent Miami viss, buyg gay porn magaz and porg over them for hours, then leavg them a hotel trash n before he flew home.</p><p class="paywall">He started gog to church aga after another close iend, a pastor, suggted that the answer he was lookg for uld be found J. They said a prayer of vatn together and Jam nsired himself born aga. He joed a charismatic evangelil church Kgston, wh a mostly upsle ngregatn, where people spoke tongu and servic lasted for hours. Jam attend worship on Sundays, went to Bible study on Mondays and Wedndays, planned church events on Thursdays, helped out wh a youth group on Fridays. He did graphic-sign work for the church his spare time. He sent away for guidance about what the church discreetly termed his “stggl.” A pamphlet me the mail, tled “Are You Gay? No Way!” It advised him to thk of all the men he wanted to sleep wh, and then to thk of all the men he wanted to be. It was the same list, wasn’t ? Relieved, Jam cid that he was straight; he jt had a hero-worship problem.</p><div><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--article-mid-ntent" role="prentatn" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--article-mid-ntent nsumer-marketg-un__slot---ntent"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></div><p class="paywall">But he felt rtls, and trated by the church’s anti-tellectualism. He began sneakg novels si a leather Bible se to read durg worship. One of them, Salman Rhdie’s “Shame,” an extravagant tall tale set “not que Pakistan” and laced wh first-person thorial tsns, rearranged his ias about what wrg uld be. He wrote a scrap of an Ain fantasy story, set a world led by eight evil spirs. Then he began wrg a novel about two myster preachers battlg for ntrol of a fict Jamain village, Gibbeah, the neteen-fifti. They are driven by sexual secrets, and Gibbeah is obscurely cursed: ad ws wh upsi-down heads wash up the river, and the sky drips wh black feathers and blood.</p><p class="paywall">He tled the novel “John Crow’s Devil” and mailed to agents and to publishers. It was rejected seventy-eight tim. He told iends to lete the pi that he’d e-mailed to them, and ceremonially burned the mancript on the balny of his apartment. But, 2004, he took an old py of the first chapter to a workshop held by Calabash, a lerary ftival on the south ast of Jamai that had been found jt a few years before. The workshop was tght that year by the wrer Kaylie Jon, whose novel “A Soldier’s Dghter Never Cri” had been adapted by Merchant Ivory Productns. She found the chapter astonishgly assured, and asked to see the rt of the book. Jam loted a py of the plete mancript his e-mail outbox. Jon read , and offered to ed ee of charge.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-1 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">At church, Jam was still stuck a cycle of temptatn, transgrsn, nfsn, and remptn. He had seen other ngregants receive exorcisms, and he cid that he need one, too. The pastor lled a church across town, aimg for discretn. Jam went there on a Tuday morng. A man and a woman were wag for him, a room that was empty except for a chair and two plastic bags. He sat down and told them about his pulsive e of pornography. He didn’t say anythg about beg attracted to men. He nfsed that he loved but didn’t like his father, who’d had four children wh other women and had moved to Antigua, where he beme a prosecutor. The woman asked Jam about his mother, and he started to bawl. He said that he doubted whether the Gospel uld help him: he uldn’t accept a fah that preached joy the morng and bullsh at night, he said. The liverers reced Bible vers and rejected Jam’s li the name of J. Jam, trmatized, began to vom, eventually fillg both plastic bags. Fally, he shouted, “I see two men fuckg every time I close my ey to pray.”</p><p class="paywall">The liverers st the spir of homosexualy out of him, and the spir of blasphemy, and the spir of disbelief. They told him that they heard eight mons si him; he had the lir thought that they were hearg the spirs that he had vented for his Ain fantasy story. After a while, he stopped cryg, and he orred his mons to leave. The woman held his face her hands and told him he was ee. For several months, there were no stggl. Then he turned to the pornography aga. This time, he didn’t feel guilty afterward. He didn’t feel that he need to be reemed by J. The exorcism had worked, he realized— had jt got rid of the wrong thg.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">Last fall, I met Jam, who was about to publish his fourth novel, at the Barn & Noble Unn Square. He is forty-eight now, and teach creative wrg at Malter College, St. Pl, Mnota. He spls his time between Mneapolis and New York, where he rented an apartment, Williamsburg, last wter. His third novel, “A Brief History of Seven Killgs,” a phono epic wh dozens of story l spirallg around the 1976 assassatn attempt on the life of Bob Marley, won the Man Booker Prize, 2015, and beme a bt-seller paperback. It was optned, first, by HBO, and later picked up by Amazon; Mela Matsoas, bt known for her work wh Beyoncé and on the TV shows “Insecure” and “Master of None,” was attached to direct. After wng the Booker, Jam told an terviewer that he was gog to “geek the fuck out” and wre an “Ain <em>Game of Thron</em>.” The first stallment of what he lls the Dark Star trilogy, “Black Leopard, Red Wolf,” out Febary.</p><p class="paywall">Jam was late to our meetg, bee he was on a nference ll wh Channel 4, England—he’s wrten a pilot for the work about a former Stland Yard tective who returns to her native Jamai and gets entangled a se that dredg up her past. The show has not yet been green-lighted, but Jam is optimistilly attemptg to wre a part for Grace Jon, who was born one town over om Portmore and is one of his idols—a prt of her “Island Life” rerd ver hangs behd his dner table Mnota. (“I was at her birthday party a few years ago,” Jam told me. “She’s super sweet, and she really knows her European neo-realist cema.”) Jam’s work the mic bs gave him experience movg among celebri; he is now, a lerary manner, one of them. “I was talkg to Lenny Kravz about ‘Dream on Monkey Mounta,’ the Waltt play,” he told me at one pot, the middle of a story about somethg else.</p><div class="Contaer-bkChBi byNLHx"></div><p class="paywall">I found a sgle seat the bookstore’s overcrowd fé and read Edh Wharton’s “The Ctom of the Country” while I waed. A shadow appeared on my page, acpanied by a Jamain accent. “Aah, Unde Spragg,” Jam said, loomg behd me. He has a ep, mellifluo voice; sounds like a brass stment beg played sarstilly. “She’s great. But I always thought Wharton was a wrer send, and a snob first.”</p><figure class="AssetEmbedWrapper-eVDQiB byBkf asset-embed"><div class="AssetEmbedAssetContaer-eJxoAx dBHGoQ asset-embed__asset-ntaer"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kKwZhx rponsive-asset AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset"><div data-attr-viewport-monor="" class="RponsiveCartoonWrapper-iTMMjI eXTYsS rponsive-rtoon AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset viewport-monor-anchor"><a class="external-lk rponsive-rtoon__image-lk" data-event-click="{"element":"ExternalLk","outgogURL":"" href=" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa RponsiveCartoonImage-hzNqyc ikeCcH rponsive-rtoon__image rponsive-image"><noscript><img alt="A group of mobsters giv a man cement sho bee he did the unacceptable takg his sho off on an airplane." class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src=" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 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ButtonWrapper-xCepQ bqVKKv YsOBB button button--primary-pair RponsiveCartoonInButton-hBCBMq lpsjql" data-event-click="{"element":"Button"}" data-ttid="Button" type="button"><span class="ButtonLabel-cjAuJN bBWXSg button__label">Shop</span><div class="ButtonInWrapper-gFdzAL bPDyTT button__in-ntaer"><svg class="in in-rt" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" xmlns="><tle>Shop</tle><g clip-path="url(#clip0_3732_178638)"><path fill-le="evenodd" clip-le="evenodd" d="M4 3H2V4H4.23828L6.99617 15.2631C7.11483 15.6982 7.50998 16 7.96094 16H18.0365C18.4875 16 18.8826 15.6982 19.0013 15.2631L20.9648 7.26312C21.1383 6.62698 20.6594 6 20 6H10V7H20L18.0365 15H7.96094L5.03652 3H4.58055H4ZM10.0365 19C10.0365 19.5523 9.58881 20 9.03652 20C8.48424 20 8.03652 19.5523 8.03652 19C8.03652 18.4477 8.48424 18 9.03652 18C9.58881 18 10.0365 18.4477 10.0365 19ZM11.0365 19C11.0365 20.1046 10.1411 21 9.03652 21C7.93195 21 7.03652 20.1046 7.03652 19C7.03652 17.8954 7.93195 17 9.03652 17C10.1411 17 11.0365 17.8954 11.0365 19ZM18.0365 19C18.0365 19.5523 17.5888 20 17.0365 20C16.4842 20 16.0365 19.5523 16.0365 19C16.0365 18.4477 16.4842 18 17.0365 18C17.5888 18 18.0365 18.4477 18.0365 19ZM19.0365 19C19.0365 20.1046 18.1411 21 17.0365 21C15.932 21 15.0365 20.1046 15.0365 19C15.0365 17.8954 15.932 17 17.0365 17C18.1411 17 19.0365 17.8954 19.0365 19Z" fill="black"></path></g><fs><clipPath id="clip0_3732_178638"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath><clipPath id="clip1_3732_178638"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath></fs></svg></div></button></div></div></div></span></div></figure><p class="paywall">Jam, who is six feet two and mcular, has a sr between his eyebrows, a scffy beard, and shoulr-length dreads that he often ti back a low ponytail. He rri himself wh a swagger that he dat to his first viss to New York, 2004. Kaylie Jon had sent the mancript of “John Crow’s Devil” to Johnny Temple, the -founr of the die prs Akashic Books. Like all of Jam’s fictn, the novel is msy and ntatory, narrated wh the distctive rg of fevered speech. “Make we tell you bout the Rum Preacher,” Part One of the novel begs. Jam had wanted to wre a “noirish, magil-realist fable” about Jamain ral life, he told me—a story that wouldn’t ialize s pastoral settg. (No “stern grandma gettg crawfish om the river,” he said.) In the book, a new preacher attempts to purge the village of s and ends up unleashg disorr. A girl remembers a man’s “jerky balls” slappg agast her naked mother; a man lled the Contraptnist is stck by lightng while mounted a mache he built to “fuck ws of any size.” The church ngregatn fls om relig ecstasy to near-monic posssn.</p></div></div></div><div class="GridItem-buujkM fVLMby grid--em grid-layout__asi"><asi class="PersistentAsiWrapper-VGrR daRVRt persistent-asi" style="posn:absolute;top:to;height:to" data-ttid="PersistentAsiWrapper"><div class="StickyBoxWrapper-jfYB jxBcTH sticky-box"><div class="StickyBoxPrimary-dzWDWL cdhYoN sticky-box__primary"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--rail"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--rail" data-no-id="x42m099"></div></div><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--display-rail" role="prentatn" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--display-rail"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></div><div class="StickyBoxPlaceholr-grPmrg dxAvXx"></div></div></asi></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="uicjk3"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bjczjj grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa bDyAMU body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">Temple loved . “It remd me of Flkner, of Stebeck, of Toni Morrison—the Old Ttament strength of the imagery, this ep, mblg, roilg heart and soul,” he told me. But one thg worried Temple, Jam said: the novel’s pictn of homosexualy. It’s amed as a product of abe and a source of shame. While Temple was edg the book, he asked Jam for his views on the subject. Jam flched at the qutn, assumg that Temple was askg if he was gay. “But he said, ‘I jt have the worry that you’ve wrten a homophobic novel,’ ” Jam relled. “I told him that I was wrg about a homophobic society. He said, ‘Well, there’s a fe le,’ and he was right. We cut a lot of that sh out of the novel, thanks to him.” (Temple’s rellectn of the exchange is fuzzy; he said that the mancript had “maybe some homophobic elements” but that he’d always tend to publish .)</p><p class="paywall">Akashic had an office near Unn Square, and, as the book was beg eded, Jam started g to New York for months at a time. He stayed wh a younger half brother, Richard, whom he’d found out about only a few years earlier. Richard worked at UBS, the Global Diversy divisn of s human- rourc partment, and lived the Bronx. They spent hours talkg, tchg up on each other’s life.</p><p class="paywall">On his first vis to the cy, Jam took the subway to Brooklyn, expectg to emerge to somethg like Hemgway’s Paris. “I would stop for ffee and Pla Fox would n up and warn me to stop distractg rears wh smut,” he later wrote. “Jhumpa Lahiri would expla that the reason her agent didn’t like my book was him not me. Instead, I uldn’t even get myself mugged.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-2 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">Jam went to the Lower East Si, where he bought a pair of ultra-low-rise Levi’s Offenr jeans and walked around feelg sndalo. He revelled downtown pleasur—rerd stor, anonymy—and wanred om bookstore to bookstore, amassg pil of paperbacks that he would ax a iend, who worked at an airle, to ship to Jamai for him. At night, a bathroom tucked away the children’s sectn of the Unn Square Barn & Noble, he performed a sort of reverse-superhero transformatn, steppg out of his Offenrs and bat boots and to a pair of baggy jeans and sneakers, and gettg on the No. 5 tra to go back up to the Bronx.</p><p class="paywall">We took the lator om the fé down to street level, and Jam poted out the scene of the bygone makeovers. After “John Crow’s Devil” was published, 2005, he went on a small book tour, road-trippg wh a iend through the Pacific Northwt, listeng to Pavement, sellg one py at a time. He felt mor. In those years, there was an active pennt lerary blogosphere, wh Web s like the Millns and Bookslut dissectg the publishg dtry. As Jam began work on his send book, he created a blog of his own. He was a natural: verbose, opnated, eager to provoke. Certa them emerged. Jam felt stifled, unappreciated; the lerary world was culturally myopic. His first entry, om May, 2006, picked a fight wh a list that the <em>Tim</em> had jt published of the bt works of Amerin fictn om the prev twenty-five years, based on a survey of wrers and crics. Morrison’s “Beloved” topped the list, but was otherwise domated by the work of whe men. The “sheer preponrance of Cs Mascul giv me pse,” Jam wrote. “For the are not jt whe male wrers, but whe male wrers obssed wh whe mal, or the se of Roth whe male wrers.”</p><p class="paywall">Jam has a fondns for sweepg, ntent statements that mix eply held nvictns wh spicy opns that he’s tryg on for size. He n sually dismiss the work of Philip Roth one post and exprs nostalgia for the bygone era of bookish braggadoc another. “When did we get so nerdy?” he asked a post bemoang the general dweebs of the ntemporary lerary scene. The age of Norman Mailer had s problems, he acknowledged—alholism and wife-stabbg, for example—but “somethg about me miss that era as if I lived through . Maybe ’s bee when the wrers seemed bigger than life the books seemed bigger than life as well.”</p><p class="paywall">We walked through the Unn Square Greenmarket, to a noisy ffee shop on Irvg Place, and took a seat at a ty rner table. Jam orred green tea, and, as he poured k to , told me about the thrill of those early trips to New York. “It’s one thg to shape-shift a Unn Square bathroom,” he said. “It’s another thg to make iends and know that you n’t image them ever meetg your fay. In fact, they didn’t meet, my fay and my iends, until the party on Monday.”</p><p class="paywall">The party was a pre-publitn fête for “Black Leopard, Red Wolf,” thrown by Riverhead, the publishg hoe that picked up Jam after “John Crow’s Devil.” It took place a Chatown lounge whose dér matched the new book’s athetic: the ceilg was black, the bar glowed emerald, and strange flowers crept om the upholstery to the walls. A uple of Jam’s brothers had e, along wh a number of iends, former stunts, and var people om the publishg world. (Jam’s mother stayed home, Jamai; his father died 2012.) Earlier the year, “Black Panther,” the Marvel movie directed by Ryan Coogler, had received sparklg reviews and earned more than a billn dollars at the global box office; the film, wh s Aofuturist sp on the superhero universe, has joed “Game of Thron” as an evable reference pot the prs for Jam’s book, which has an announced prt n more than triple the size of the first prtg for “Brief History.” Like “Black Panther,” “Black Leopard, Red Wolf” aims to be an event, and to unter the domant imprsn of the genre habs. Instead of kgs wh swords and flaxen-haired prcs, the novel ntas pch-skned wch haloed be, and vampir that turn your blood to blue lightng, and mons that e screechg across rooftops the dark.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">For a wrer who once lamented that no one would ever read his books, Jam’s timg is spic: among the sort of people who pay attentn to the Booker Prize, snobbery about wizards and dragons and aliens is creasgly passé. The kd of realism that tends to predomate lerary fictn is “as fantastil as sword and sorcery,” Jam told me. “The world of a lot of the novels is super whe, super middle-class, women only appear a certa way. That isn’t real life! There are black people on Nantucket! We’ve given social realism this pri of place as the thg wh the most verisiu, but there’s more verisiu Aop’s fabl. Lerary wrers don’t get to talk down to sci-fi about vented worlds.”</p><p class="paywall">A blatant preference for Cs Mascul is no longer particularly fashnable, eher. Sci-fi was shaped s early years by wrers, such as H. P. Lovecraft, who were obssed wh the monstrosy of the human other; classic fantasy tal are full of pale European hero on horseback strivg to prerve the virg landspe om evil forc and animalistic vars. But there is a long unter-tradn of speculative fictn by black wrers, om W. E. B. Du Bois’s 1920 apolypse story “The Comet” through such major figur of the genre as Samuel Delany and Octavia Butler. In the neteen-seventi, the wrer Charl R. Snrs began publishg the stori that beme “Imaro,” a fantasy novel set on an Ai-like ntent lled Nyumbani. “We have to brg some to get some outer space and otherspace, as we have done here on Earth,” Snrs wrote, an say published 2000. Fantasy and sci-fi nstct imagative versns of where we have e om and where we might be gog; for Snrs and others, wrg such stori wh black characters is a matter of regnizg that black people have shaped the past and will play a val part the future.</p></div></div></div><div class="GridItem-buujkM fVLMby grid--em grid-layout__asi"><div class="StickyBoxWrapper-jfYB jxBcTH sticky-box"><div class="StickyBoxPrimary-dzWDWL cdhYoN sticky-box__primary"></div><div class="StickyBoxPlaceholr-grPmrg dxAvXx"></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="9q1uej"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bjczjj grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa bDyAMU body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">A few years ago, as more women and people of lor began wng Hugo Awards, the hight honors speculative fictn, a group of wrers lnched a mpaign agast what they regard as an unjt stance of “affirmative actn” by the fans who annually ci the wners. But the fans ultimately rejected the reactnari: 2016, most of the major tegori were won by women and mory wrers. N. K. Jemis, the thor of the blockbter Broken Earth trilogy, beme the first black wrer to w the Hugo for bt novel. She went on to w the award three years a row, which was also unprecented. Recently, while buyg a book SoHo, I watched people hover over a new shelf labelled “Science Fictn: Neher Whe, Nor European.” It looked like a nursery wh a cradle ready for Jam’s book.</p><p class="paywall">A uple of weeks before we met for ffee, I went to hear Jam speak on a panel about diversy sci-fi and fantasy, at New York Comic Con, a nventn that annually nverts the Javs Center to a maelstrom of geekery and splay. The dience for the panel was a mixture of black, whe, and brown fac; a few rows om me, a Harley Qun hijab took fur not. After a fellow-panelist, Tochi Onyebuchi, the thor of a young-adult fantasy seri fluenced by Nigerian myth, urged the crowd to read Jemis’s books, Jam joked that Jemis would be g for the Booker next. (He told the crowd they should also read Nalo Hopkson, a Jamain-born Canadian wrer whose début, “Brown Girl the Rg,” om 1998, is a dystopian horror-fantasy story animated by the Wt Ain spir-magic tradn of Obeah.) Even as nscensn toward genre fictn has gone out of style, the univers of lerary and speculative fictn rema distct, wh their own awards, their own publishers, and their own separate, albe overlappg, muni of rears. “There are a lot of lerary-fictn thors whose heads are super stuck up their ass,” Jam said, tellg the atten that wrers ought to read wily across genr.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-3 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">Several years ago, after a tratg argument wh a iend about the all-whe st of “The Hobb,” Jam had an impulse “to reclaim all the stuff I like—urt trigue, monsters, magic,” he told me. “I wanted black pageantry. I wanted jt one novel where someone like me is , and I don’t have to look like I jt walked out of H. P. Lovecraft, wh a bone my hair, and my lips are bigger than my ey, and I’m sayg some sh like ‘Oonga boonga boonga.’ Or else I’m some fucker named Gagool and I’m thwartg you as you get the diamonds.” Though Jam is well versed the recent flourishg of speculative fictn om the Ain diaspora, he still sometim talks about the Dark Star trilogy as though there were nothg parable the world—partly bee when he first dreamed up the project, several years ago, felt tly opposnal, and partly, perhaps, bee he still has a tenncy to see himself as an embattled rebel, even as the world has begun to celebrate him. He wanted to wre a black fantasy novel that would succeed wh a lerary dience, too, the way that Sanna Clarke’s “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell” had, 2004, wng a Hugo and gettg longlisted for the Booker. “So I did as Toni Morrison said, and I cid I would wre the novel I wanted to read,” he told me.</p><p class="paywall">For two years, he rearched Ain history and mythology, nstctg the foundatn for a fantastil visn of the ntent that would vert the monolhic “Ai” vented by the Wt. He drew on oral epics, like the Epic of Sundiata, which some people believe was the basis for “The Ln Kg,” though the filmmakers have lled an “origal story,” while admtg some parallels wh Shakpeare. (“I felt like the stori had been stolen om me,” Jam said at Comic Con. “People say that ‘The Ln Kg’ is based on ‘Hamlet.’ Please.”) He read legendary monster tal, like those about the Inkanyamba, a South Ain serpent wh a horse’s head, who summer storms. He ma not on the grammar of Ain languag, to flect the book’s prose. He briefly nsired dog a historil seri, an “Ethpian ‘Wolf Hall,’ ” but then reverted to his dream of wrg fantasy that honored the Ain diaspora. He wanted to build a “vast playground of myth and history and legend that other people n draw om, a pool that’s as rich as Vikg or Celtic lore,” he said.</p><p class="paywall">He sketched his new world’s geography. (The maps that appear the book are his work.) He ma a list of characters that kept gettg longer. There would be a qut to fd a boy, he cid, and a motley group of seekers: a Moon Wch, a mournful giant, a perceptive buffalo. He wonred if the Ai—a man wh “sk like tar, hair red, when you see him you hear the flutter of black wgs”—ought to narrate the story. Then he started thkg about a character lled Tracker, a hunter wh a nose that n ss out the tails of a man’s life an stant—the spic his kchen, the last time he washed—and track a woman to another cy wh jt a whiff of her shirt. Tracker would be sullen and rentful, rervg his gentlens for a group of formed children, lled <em>mgi</em>, whom he meets through an “anti-wch” lled the Sangoma.</p></div></div></div><div class="GridItem-buujkM fVLMby grid--em grid-layout__asi"><div class="StickyBoxWrapper-jfYB jxBcTH sticky-box"><div class="StickyBoxPrimary-dzWDWL cdhYoN sticky-box__primary"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--rail"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--rail" data-no-id="2mney4"></div></div><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--display-rail" role="prentatn" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--display-rail"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></div><div class="StickyBoxPlaceholr-grPmrg dxAvXx"></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="8ksqm"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bjczjj grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa bDyAMU body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">Jam took a yearlong sabbatil om Malter to work on the book. But when the sabbatil was nearg s end, the summer of 2016, he had ten Molk of not and no story stcture. One day he was talkg wh Mela Matsoas, and she mentned the Showtime seri “The Affair,” which shifts perspectiv, “Rashomon” style, allowg s characters’ versns of events to diverge. The school year was about to start, but Jam knew that this was the solutn. Before the fall semter had end, he’d wrten the first hundred pag.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">Jam began teachg at Malter 2007. After “John Crow’s Devil” was published, he attend a low-rincy M.F.A. program at Wilk Universy, Pennsylvania, at the suggtn of Kaylie Jon. He knew that a gree uld open the door to a teachg job the Uned Stat. “If you are a wrer Jamai, maybe even the Caribbean, there a pot when you jt have to go,” he wrote on his blog, a month after movg to Mnota. He add, “I love my untry but I’ve never missed , perhaps bee I have never fotten the reasons I left.”</p><p class="paywall">In early November, I flew out to Mnota. The landspe on the drive om the airport to mp was lorls and ozen. It spooked Jam when he first arrived. He had a hundred dollars his pocket, and he knew almost no one; he spent almost a month livg off pa chips and humm. Fally, he lled Ingrid, who now works as a digal-media nsultant and is still his bt iend. (“I always knew he was a wrer,” she told me recently. “And I always knew he was gay.”) He asked her to Wtern Unn him some sh om Kgston.</p><p class="paywall">In his first semter, Jam tght a fictn workshop and a class on the lerature of 9/11: Claire Msud’s “The Emperor’s Children,” which he lov; John Updike’s “Terrorist,” which he thks is awful; Deborah Eisenberg’s story “Twilight of the Superhero,” which he regards as the bt work of fictn about the attacks. When I vised, he was teachg a nonfictn workshop. On a Thursday afternoon, his classroom was dim; late-fall sunlight st slantg shadows. Jam, patchwork jeans and a nim oxford, mand the room wh a genero attentn that took a variety of forms, pendg on the stunt who was receivg : gentlens, proddg, bemed sarsm. “Don’t assume that everyone knows what a hotep is,” he told a stunt who had wrten about an enunter at a barbershop wh an exemplar of the type, a man whose Aocentrism was mixed wh regrsive sanctimony. “Hoteps are pro-black but anti-progrs,” Jam explaed to the class. “They’re stunngly sexist. Your favore rapper is probably a hotep. He also might be gay. When I ed to work the dtry, I got monthly updat on who’s gay. But I’m not gonna tell you!”</p><figure class="AssetEmbedWrapper-eVDQiB byBkf asset-embed"><div class="AssetEmbedAssetContaer-eJxoAx dBHGoQ asset-embed__asset-ntaer"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kKwZhx rponsive-asset AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset"><div data-attr-viewport-monor="" class="RponsiveCartoonWrapper-iTMMjI eXTYsS rponsive-rtoon AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset viewport-monor-anchor"><a class="external-lk rponsive-rtoon__image-lk" data-event-click="{"element":"ExternalLk","outgogURL":"" href=" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa RponsiveCartoonImage-hzNqyc ikeCcH rponsive-rtoon__image rponsive-image"><noscript><img alt="God looks down at Earth and fawns over s stctn bee looks so ty and cute." class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src=" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w, 960w, 1280w, 1600w" siz="100vw"/></noscript></picture></a><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE gdZTpI ptn RponsiveCartoonCaptn-dokfdF hJgaLQ rponsive-rtoon__ptn"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnText-bHjzlu iUEiRd hWyo bsWloa ptn__text">“Aww!”</span></div><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTA-eiqqMB iDCQRs"><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTAWrapper-CYIqa iTbFtf"><div class="RponsiveCartoonLkButtonWrapper-hqDAJK eSEhbj"><button aria-label="Copy lk to rtoon" class="BaseButton-bLlsy ButtonWrapper-xCepQ bqVKKv YsOBB button button--primary-pair RponsiveCartoonInButton-hBCBMq lpsjql" data-event-click="{"element":"Button"}" data-ttid="Button" type="button"><span class="ButtonLabel-cjAuJN bBWXSg button__label">Copy lk to rtoon</span><div class="ButtonInWrapper-gFdzAL bPDyTT button__in-ntaer"><svg class="in in-pylk" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" xmlns="><tle>Copy lk to rtoon</tle><g clip-path="url(#clip0_3732_178637)"><path fill-le="evenodd" clip-le="evenodd" d="M16.3488 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10.236C11.7221 10.5151 11.8911 10.8724 12.1932 11.0008C12.2973 11.0451 12.4 11.0956 12.5007 11.1525C13.9356 11.9632 14.4272 13.7587 13.5988 15.1628L11.5988 18.5529C10.7704 19.957 8.93555 20.4382 7.50068 19.6274C6.0658 18.8167 5.57417 17.0212 6.4026 15.6171L7.6526 13.4983Z" fill="black"></path></g><fs><clipPath id="clip0_3732_178637"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath><clipPath id="clip1_3732_178637"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath></fs></svg></div></button><div class="AlertWrapper-gvFATk MdjE RponsiveCartoonLkAlertPopup-BPAXn kdMXRM shoppg-alert" role="dialog"><div aria-hidn="te" role="prentatn" class="AlertArrow-daOgye AlLda alert-arrow"></div><div class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ AlertMsage-jgAjgo bVCFRm ifgabc cxFROy alert-msage"><p aria-hidn="te">Lk pied</p></div></div></div><button aria-label="Shop" class="BaseButton-bLlsy ButtonWrapper-xCepQ bqVKKv YsOBB button button--primary-pair RponsiveCartoonInButton-hBCBMq lpsjql" data-event-click="{"element":"Button"}" data-ttid="Button" type="button"><span class="ButtonLabel-cjAuJN bBWXSg button__label">Shop</span><div class="ButtonInWrapper-gFdzAL bPDyTT button__in-ntaer"><svg class="in in-rt" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" xmlns="><tle>Shop</tle><g clip-path="url(#clip0_3732_178638)"><path fill-le="evenodd" clip-le="evenodd" d="M4 3H2V4H4.23828L6.99617 15.2631C7.11483 15.6982 7.50998 16 7.96094 16H18.0365C18.4875 16 18.8826 15.6982 19.0013 15.2631L20.9648 7.26312C21.1383 6.62698 20.6594 6 20 6H10V7H20L18.0365 15H7.96094L5.03652 3H4.58055H4ZM10.0365 19C10.0365 19.5523 9.58881 20 9.03652 20C8.48424 20 8.03652 19.5523 8.03652 19C8.03652 18.4477 8.48424 18 9.03652 18C9.58881 18 10.0365 18.4477 10.0365 19ZM11.0365 19C11.0365 20.1046 10.1411 21 9.03652 21C7.93195 21 7.03652 20.1046 7.03652 19C7.03652 17.8954 7.93195 17 9.03652 17C10.1411 17 11.0365 17.8954 11.0365 19ZM18.0365 19C18.0365 19.5523 17.5888 20 17.0365 20C16.4842 20 16.0365 19.5523 16.0365 19C16.0365 18.4477 16.4842 18 17.0365 18C17.5888 18 18.0365 18.4477 18.0365 19ZM19.0365 19C19.0365 20.1046 18.1411 21 17.0365 21C15.932 21 15.0365 20.1046 15.0365 19C15.0365 17.8954 15.932 17 17.0365 17C18.1411 17 19.0365 17.8954 19.0365 19Z" fill="black"></path></g><fs><clipPath id="clip0_3732_178638"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath><clipPath id="clip1_3732_178638"><rect width="24" height="24" fill="whe"></rect></clipPath></fs></svg></div></button></div></div></div></span></div></figure><p class="paywall">Jam is a proponent of M.F.A. programs as a source of lerary muny—he has enuraged many of his stunts to apply—but he is baleful about “M.F.A. fictn,” which often falls wh the realm of domtic realism that he loath. “We did a job search at Malter and I uld intify the program wrers had gone to by their wrg sampl,” he told me. “There’s so much attentn to <em>rrectns</em>. There’s too narrow a view of what nstut a story, and how should be told.”</p><p class="paywall">When to feedback on his own work, Jam is headstrong and malleable by turns. He rents many forms of edorial imposn, nursg cherished gdg agast the people who, for stance, told him that “John Crow’s Devil” was too foreign for Amerin rears. (Its style is legimately formidable, and not always succsful—I would remend only to people who also enjoy, say, the very early work of Cormac McCarthy.) But, if someone offers an astute rrectn, he never fets . For most of his reer, he’s been workg off a note that the Tridadian novelist Elizabeth Nunez gave him at a Calabash workshop 2002. “She told me that I was talented, but that I didn’t know how to wre women,” he said. “I didn’t know how women related to each other, how they procsed the unthkable.” He reread Iris Murdoch, Alice Walker, and Muriel Spark, and nclud that Nunez was right.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-4 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">As if acceptg a challenge, he set his send novel entirely the world of the feme unthkable. “The Book of Night Women” tells the story of six enslaved half sisters livg on a sugarne plantatn the late eighteenth century who plot a rebelln agast the overseer who fathered them. Jam had wanted to wre about the impossibly btal and volatile perd Jamai when enslaved Ains outnumbered their whe owners by more than ten to one. “The Book of Night Women” is full of rage, and a terrible bety; the <em>Tim</em>, the scholar Kaiama L. Glover pared to the work of Morrison and Walker. She also noted that much of the book is, “unrstandably, very difficult to read.” It is wrten entirely eighteenth-century patois, and teems wh timate agony, om an attempted rape and subsequent murr early on to a seri of mass executns at the novel’s end. “I thk vlence should be vlent,” Jam told one terviewer. There is nothg “tasteful or betifully wrten or wonrfully wrought” about vlence real life. Sure, he admted, explic vlence and sex n quickly turn pornographic. “So what?” he said. “Risk pornography. Risk .”</p><p class="paywall">In his office at Malter, beneath a poster of David Bowie, Jam told me that he’d actually nsired “The Book of Night Women” a mercial work. It had a mmerizg protagonist—the vlent, green-eyed Lilh—and, wh the tickg clock of the rebelln, a tight, cematic hook of a plot. He’d wrten the first draft the third person, through the ey of a Brish magistrate. “I really tried to get my Jane Aten on!” he said.</p><p class="paywall">I remembered a story he’d told me—one of his favore gdg—about his attempts to get the book published. An edor at Vikg UK had suggted that he rewre the book Standard English. “You hated that suggtn,” I said. “But Standard English was actually the first thg you tried.”</p><p class="paywall">“Of urse!” he said. “People gotta eat! I’ve been tryg to sell out for years!”</p><p class="paywall">He pulled up a file on his puter and showed me the old draft. The wrg was classil and polished. It also felt ted and stilted. As Jam worked on the book, Lilh’s dialogue gradually took over; he trashed the draft and began aga, startg the book wh her. The rult might still be his bt novel. As wh the rt of his work, the strength of the book li the knowledge of power that is exclive to the powerls, and the unexpected, even unclassifiable ways which his protagonists navigate the systems they’ve been forced to live wh. Lilh, proud and selfish, distanc herself om her half sisters, and thrills to private visns of revenge and dive apolypse, imagg that “te womanns was to be ee to be as terrible as you wish.”</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">In 1965, Chua Achebe wrote about a boy his wife’s English classroom, Nigeria, who was so aaid of beg lled a bhman that he wrote about wter when he meant the harmattan, a wdy season Wt Ai. “How n this great blasphemy be purged?” Achebe asked. It was part of his work, as a wrer, to “teach that boy that there is nothg disgraceful about the Ain weather, that the palm tree is a f subject for poetry.” The dilemma was that of g the lonizer’s language to reprent the post-lonial world. Derek Waltt wrote, 1980, “It’s good that everythg’s gone, except their language, / Which is everythg.” Jam feels himself to be a dialogue wh Caribbean wrers—cludg Waltt and V. S. Naipl—who simultaneoly mastered and wrtled wh the lonial English that they were tght as kids. But he is, he has said, “post-post-lonial.” While an earlier generatn of wrers fed themselv agast Brish imperialism, the “hoverg power” for Jam was the Uned Stat. He se this orientatn as typil of younger diasporic wrers, such as the Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, whose bt-sellg “Amerinah,” om 2013, Jam creds wh changg attus, the publishg dtry, toward novels by and about people of lor. The Caribbean has given him “the huge buffets of language, which I have every right to e and to not e,” he said.</p><p class="paywall">“A Brief History of Seven Killgs” is Jam’s most virtuosic verbal performance: is prefaced wh a st list of seventy-six characters, and employs almost as many first-person voic. There’s Dr. Arthur Jenngs, the ad polician whose narratn jump-starts the story; Na, a nihilistic receptnist; Dr. Love, a Mellín operative traed by the C.I.A.; Bam-Bam, a baby gangbanger; John-John, a gay h man; Josey Wal, the tricky, perceptive enforcer who flubs the Marley assassatn but then ascends to the top of a transnatnal dg syndite. The story begs a and a half after Jamai attaed pennce; Marley had brought global attentn to the island’s mic, and the Rollg Ston had e to Kgston to rerd “Goats Head Soup.” On the street, the People’s Natnal Party, led by the reformist Prime Mister Michael Manley, was at war wh the nservative Jamai Labour Party. Jam was elementary school at the time. His neighborhood Portmore was so peaceful was borg, he told me, but he had to be reful walkg around certa areas Kgston, where he went to school. When Marley was shot, the event reverberated. “I knew my parents were sred, even if I uldn’t unrstand why,” Jam has said. “There was a sense that anythg uld happen.”</p><p class="paywall">The novel is as emphatic a statement of lerary ambn as you’ll fd ntemporary fictn. Its spe is Dickensian—’s a kaleidospic, ke-spiked “Our Mutual Friend”—and, the mands mak on the rear, lls to md postmorn doorstops like “Gravy’s Rabow” and “Infe Jt.” Jam’s gifts as a wrer—his theatril unrepentance, and his unbiddable style—n double as obstacl: “Brief History” is both exhstg and exhilaratg, sometim simultaneoly. (There’s a thread on Redd, om 2015, headled “I need some help followg A Brief History of Seven Killgs.” The top reply begs, “My advice would be to relax when to tryg to keep close tabs on all the plot lks this one.”) When won the Booker Prize, Jam told me, he was astonished. His money had been on “A Ltle Life,” Hanya Yanagihara’s bildungsroman-cum-trma-opera set ntemporary New York.</p><p class="paywall">A few months before the prize ceremony, Jam published an say the <em>Tim Magaze</em> tled “From Jamai to Mnota to Myself,” which he me out publicly for the first time. He’d got there by steps: durg his M.F.A. program, he’d told a classmate, over MSN Msenger, that he was gay; Mnota, he’d gradually settled to his inty, lettg people assume his sexualy. He joed Tr and Grdr. (No one regnized his photo on eher app, he said, apart om the man who sent him a msage tellg him to stop tfishg strangers by pretendg to be Marlon Jam.) But he had never spoken to his fay about his sexualy. The week before the piece was published, Jam had dner New York wh Richard, and renciled himself, while they were eatg, to the possibily that they would never have dner aga.</p></div></div></div><div class="GridItem-buujkM fVLMby grid--em grid-layout__asi"><div class="StickyBoxWrapper-jfYB jxBcTH sticky-box"><div class="StickyBoxPrimary-dzWDWL cdhYoN sticky-box__primary"></div><div class="StickyBoxPlaceholr-grPmrg dxAvXx"></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="9f0toa"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bjczjj grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa bDyAMU body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">But there was no rift between them. Jam’s brothers—he has seven brothers and sisters, four of them half siblgs, though Jam speaks of them all simply as siblgs—had discsed the possibily that Jam was gay, Richard told me, speakg on the phone om a barbershop, above the metallic hum of clippers. “The thg is, we all love women a lot,” Richard said. “And I’d never seen him wh a partner, perd. He was always his work. It was a good exce.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-5 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">The fay is tightly kn, Richard told me—“When all the brothers get a room and talk, you don’t know who’s talkg; we all sound like each other,” he said. I asked Richard if he ever wished that Jam had been able to e out to him earlier. “We’re a very mascule culture,” he replied. “And even wh our fay the men are very mascule.” He add, “For me, never mattered.”</p><p class="paywall">Richard scribed their father as a larger-than-life figure who had a “gift wh words” and a “pacy for reventg himself.” (“I thk we all have , too,” he said.) Jam told me that his father’s ath changed his sense of what was possible. “When you’re a Jamain or Ain or Arab closet—you love your parents, but some ways you feel like you n’t be ee until they die,” he said. Jam and his mother have never spoken directly about the say, but she texts him all day long on WhatsApp, speakg a maternal lgua an of viral vios and Christian mem. All of the siblgs are on a separate WhatsApp chat together; at one pot, Jam showed me a stream of texts about the Powerball jackpot—everyone had bought tickets but him. Have they ever won any lotto money? “Of urse not,” he said. “No one’s won sh!”</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">On my send night Mneapolis, an icy layer of snow settled on I-94. Jam do not have a driver’s license, and so I drove , very slowly, to a bar St. Pl, where Jake Shears, the former lead sger of Scissor Sisters, was playg a solo show. Jam had met Shears earlier the year, at a lerary ftival. Jam was wearg a long black tunic, sl up to the thigh, and bat boots.</p><p class="paywall">Jam is creasgly fortable Mnota. (Durg my vis, I said that I’d heard he was a great host, and he quickly pulled together a thoughtful dner party for six, grdg spic for chicken curry and drizzlg Egyptian molass on roasted rrots.) He has also wrten wh bter eloquence about the racism he has enuntered his adopted home. After Philando Castile, an employee at a St. Pl Montsori school, was shot and killed by a police officer durg a traffic stop, 2016, Jam wrote on Facebook about ridg his bike on dark roads rather than on well-l streets where officers might be lookg for someone who fs a scriptn. “Do I kneel and get shot?” he asked. “Do I reach for my ID and get shot? Do I say I’m an English teacher and get shot? Do I tell them everythg I am about to do, and get shot? Do I assume that seven of them will still feel threatened by one of me, and get shot? Do I simply stand and be big black guy and get shot?” This fear has td on some of his happit moments, like the night he went out to Paisley Park wh a bunch of lleagu and iends to try to tch a glimpse of Prce, and end up shoutg, “It’s O.K.! We’re English teachers!” as secury headlights shed his face.</p><p class="paywall">At the bar, there was a hand-lettered sign atop a ltle table that read “Rerved for Marlon Jam.” “I should have worn tights unrneath this drs,” Jam said, as we sat down. For the first time sce I’d met him, he seemed unsure of himself. “I don’t regnize anyone here,” he said, lookg around. The room was full of whe guys wearg Queens of the Stone Age hoodi and baseball hats bearg the logo of the Mnota Vikgs—men who, New York, might have appeared to be straight dads g om a okout. “The gay muny Mneapolis is very sular,” he said. “It’s isolatg. I’ve never been on the si. I’ve been here for eleven years and only dated one person. And then I got my place New York this wter, and wh four months I was datg this guy.”</p><p class="paywall">Jam was head back to New York the next morng to see the new boyiend, a blond Jam Baldw scholar his early forti who teach Manhattan and had spent the past few months the South of France, on a fellowship. Talkg to Jam about the relatnship, I sometim felt like an nt beg nosy wh my bashful, llege-age nephew—I was nsc of the ntrast between the sweet shyns wh which he spoke about romantic matters and the gleeful profany of his work. Jam disdas the way sex is often wrten lerary fictn, wh timidy and avoidance drsed up as discretn. (He terms this “space-break sex.”) “Some wrers make you thk that the rnal world don’t matter,” he said. “But people exist space, people smell, people’s voic rry sound and power. Our bodi tell people thgs. Our bodi are tellg <em></em> thgs.”</p><p class="paywall">At the bar, Jam grooved his seat, pluckg out mil referenc Shears’s set: a bass le that evoked the Bee Ge here, a sli guar that sound like Roxy Mic there. Shears closed the set by talkg about the midterms and sgg “Tomorrow,” om “Annie.” In a full-throated glam roar, was rplennt, and I wonred aloud why Queen never vered the song. “Bee Freddie didn’t want to out himself!” Jam said.</p><p class="paywall">Backstage, Shears embraced Jam and mand a py of “Black Leopard.” As we were leavg, Jam glanced at the “Rerved for Marlon Jam” sign on our table. “I kd of want to steal ,” he said. I put my purse, imagg stg on a shelf his apartment, next to the Grace Jon poster and a fat stack of foreign translatns of “Brief History,” all of proof of the person he is still wrg to existence.</p><figure class="AssetEmbedWrapper-eVDQiB byBkf asset-embed"><div class="AssetEmbedAssetContaer-eJxoAx dBHGoQ asset-embed__asset-ntaer"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kKwZhx rponsive-asset AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset"><div data-attr-viewport-monor="" class="RponsiveCartoonWrapper-iTMMjI eXTYsS rponsive-rtoon AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset viewport-monor-anchor"><a class="external-lk rponsive-rtoon__image-lk" data-event-click="{"element":"ExternalLk","outgogURL":"" href=" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa RponsiveCartoonImage-hzNqyc ikeCcH rponsive-rtoon__image rponsive-image"><noscript><img alt="A woman explas her reer choic to a man she's stg wh at a table." class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src=" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w, 960w, 1280w, 1600w" siz="100vw"/></noscript></picture></a><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE gdZTpI ptn RponsiveCartoonCaptn-dokfdF hJgaLQ rponsive-rtoon__ptn"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnText-bHjzlu iUEiRd hWyo bsWloa ptn__text">“I went to teachg bee I’ve always loved crazy parents.”</span></div><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTA-eiqqMB iDCQRs"><div class="RponsiveCartoonCTAWrapper-CYIqa iTbFtf"><div class="RponsiveCartoonLkButtonWrapper-hqDAJK eSEhbj"><button aria-label="Copy lk to rtoon" class="BaseButton-bLlsy ButtonWrapper-xCepQ bqVKKv YsOBB button button--primary-pair RponsiveCartoonInButton-hBCBMq lpsjql" data-event-click="{"element":"Button"}" data-ttid="Button" type="button"><span class="ButtonLabel-cjAuJN bBWXSg button__label">Copy lk to rtoon</span><div class="ButtonInWrapper-gFdzAL bPDyTT button__in-ntaer"><svg class="in in-pylk" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" xmlns="><tle>Copy lk to rtoon.

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