Stanley Bennett Clay
An interview with Stanley Bennett Clay
By Stephen Andrieux
Kuttinedgeonline.com
Recently kuttinedgeonline.com had the pleasure of meeting up with esteemed author Stanley Bennett Clay to discuss his brand new book “Looker.” We hope you enjoy this insightful look into the life of Stanley and his captivating new book. If you haven’t had the opportunity to purchase his new book check out the kuttinedgeonline.com shopping section and purchase your copy today!.
Stephen: So Stanley, I am so glad that we are able to finally speak. I have been such a strong fan of your work and I am eager to share learning more about the man behind the literature. Where is life like for Stanley after this latest release?
Stanley: I am very comfortable where I am right now. I have had successful careers as an actor writer and as a composer and it has been very rewarding.
The most important thing that I can say right now is that I have great friends and family and health. I have great health on top of everything.
I guess as I reflect on all of my accomplishment, I have to ask myself, how did I luck out to get all of these blessings and I think part of it is that I so humbly appreciate them.
Stephen: What were the challenges in getting to this point in your life?
The challenges, I don’t know if they were challenges. I always thought that my life was pretty boring because I did not have the challenges that other people had.
I had a wonderful mother and a wonderful father who passed away.
I grew up watching them with very little money create this world for themselves and their family and it was not until I became an adult that I was really aware about the turmoil that was happening in a lot of black families, I was kind of like sheltered in that respect.
So the challenges for me were trying to understand other people’s challenges. I think that I try to capture that in my writing. What I’ve done is that I recognize those conflicts and for lack of a better term act as a voyeur, watching what other people were going through and telling those stories.
It was very hard for me to write anything autobiographical because I find my autobiography kind of boring.
But I find what other people are doing very interesting with facing conflicts and things like that.
Stephen: I wouldn’t say that your life is boring; I mean you have written numerous books and plays, been publisher of two magazines and won 3 NAACP awards. That has got to be an exciting experience?
Stanley: Well you know what it is. What’s interesting about winning awards. I have been winning awards all of my life and I think because I write honestly and as an actor I try to act honestly. I try to do things in an honest way and without wanting to do it to get an award. But……. suddenly people want to give me an award for it. Wow! It is just another humbling experience for me. I am always amazed that people think that I was that good that I deserved to win an award. You know it’s just another blessing. I definitely have to say that there are more blessings than challenges.
But if I am to directly answer your question I would have to say the biggest challenges is to keep improving upon myself. As someone says I really your work or I really like this particular book or I like really like this particular play. The challenge becomes to do something better.
That’s the challenge.
Stephen: Where did you get the inspiration for your book?
I always wanted to write about my community in Los Angeles because we don’t see a lot of stories about the black middle class in Los Angeles. It is either South Central or gang banging or it’s the fake and the plastic.
I wanted to chronicle the other world. There is another world that no one ever talks about. It’s the largest black community in Los Angeles which is the Baldwin Hills, Leimert Park, View Park, Area Theses areas are very conservative in living conditions but the community is very liberal and politically active and very powerful. They are very comfortable in their lives but they are not about the bling, bling. They are not about talking about it. They are not very demonstrative. I wanted to tell the story of those people that live in and for all intensive purposes a paradise, because Los Angeles is a paradise.
I wanted to write about this as people don’t get that lifestyle if you were to go by a lot of the literature that’s out there today. So as a result, I said that I want to be this crazy LA writer that writes those stories . I wrote in search of “Pretty Young Black Men” and “Looker” is the continuation of that kind of story. I wanted to write about your average every day well adjusted black homosexual, which we don’t get to enough of. Every Black homosexual is not crazy or sexed up or all this kind of stuff that you see in some of the media portrayals.
Most black homosexuals that I find are in some kind of decent relationship. The one’s that are single maybe that younger one’s but in my generation I find more people in long term committed relationships that are going through what everybody else is going through in a regular relationship. So there is nothing strange about it.
Stephen: So tell my audience a little about “Looker”?
I wanted to tell the story about a guy who faces the challenge that his life is almost too perfect. In his quest throughout this book he searches for the passion that is some how lacking in his life and it takes outside forces to create and to ignite the passion.
It was always their but it was lying dormant.. So that is what the story is really about. How do you ignite passion and realize that the love your life was staring you in the face all the time. He winds up falling in love with his best friend.
Stephen: So what kind of response have you received from the book?
Stanley: An excellent response, the reviews have been really great. Grady Huff, a top ten reviewer on Amazon.com has given it a five star review and Raw Sister book review which is a network of black female writers has given it five stars and a rave review and Clik Magazine has a given it a rave review. So, I’m kind of like taken a back by that cause I know what I went through writing the book and the complexity of writing the book.
So I am proud that it has been well received.
Stephen: How long did it take you to write the book?
Stanley: It didn’t take me a long time, but what I tend to do is write 4 to 5 projects at once. Whichever one gets finished first is the one that goes out next. I don’t even remember when I started it but I said oh, I think that this is finished and turned it into the publisher.
The publisher’s liked it, and I must say that I have to give a lot of credit to my publishers.
Stephen: You’re with Simon & Schuster?
Stanley: Yes.
There is this young editor over there by the name of Rashawn Trotman, who just gave me some insight on the younger generation and taught me how to address certain issues that younger people, people much younger than myself are face with.
So there nothing like a good editor and this young lady really made the book better than it would have been without her input.
Stephen: What do you find to be the difference between the age groups?
Stanley: When I was coming up, there was really no age gaps because the different age groups because the different age groups hung out together.
Stephen: Do you feel that this still goes on?
Stanley: I would have to answer that based on my own personal experience. I tend to have younger friends I find people in my own age category, they tend to be a little cynical, they tend to complain a lot and it ultimately comes down to that when you reach a certain age they are sitting around waiting to die.
The one thing that I like about young people is the optimism. I get energized by that.
There is a great deal of wisdom among older people but also there is a great deal of cynicism.. So, I tend to find young people to hang out with. And as a result even in my relationships. I mean the guy that I have been involved with for the last four years is 24 years old. I find that I learn so much from him and his enthusiasm for life.
Because you see, I’m still young at heart kind of person and I want to be able to talk about the possibilities. the limitless possibilities of life. I really don’t want to have a conversation with someone who has already limited their life and put a cap on it.
Stephen: Well, I was very happy to see that you have come out with another book, because I think that literature is something that our community so needs. How you feel about what it is our younger generation is doing right now?
Stanley: It is a very complex thing for me. On one hand I am very disturbed by the DL situation, I am not as disturbed by the homophobia because I think that this generation is probably less homophobic because they actually understand it a lot better. It is no big deal to a lot of younger people. It’s a big deal to people in the public eye.
The same rappers who are sitting their talking about faggots and homosexuals are the same ones that are getting their ass’s fucked everyday. And the same ones that are out their with every man they can get their hands on.
But those young people who have a sense of self who are real heterosexuals who are real solid in their sexuality they don’t have a problem with it.
They realize that we live in the world that has so much prejudice and that how in the world can you say that someone is a racist and you yourself are homophobic.
Cause if the white man calls you a nigger, if a man calls a woman a bitch, a straight person calls a gay person a faggot, your all in the same hell hole.
What everybody has to understand is that the issues is cross generational. No generation has a lock on that. But I have a lot of hope for young people because I think that when this older generation dies out and a lot of their old fucked up ideas die out. The world will be a better place
You know the thing is that we all have equal sharing in society and I think that young people are beginning to understand it because young people now are getting to know other kinds of people. Thank God for the internet.
Stephen: What have you seen happening throughout the generations coming up?
I think that one of the things and this may contradict something that I said earlier. I do see that the down low thing as damaging because and I say it may contradict something I said earlier because I said that this generation is more enlightened in certain areas. The down low thing is preventing a movement.
I came out as a gay man a year before stonewall in 1968 and at that time when stonewall hit. It was a revolution and at the same time as the gay revolution it was women’s liberation, it was the civil rights movement.
So you had all of these people that white straight constipated America had a thing against. When all three of these events came about and at the same time, there was much more support for each other as a whole. The Black Panther’s were supporting the Gay movement, the women were supporting the gay movement, the gay movement was supporting the women’s movement. Everyone was supporting each other and everyone was marching and protesting.
And you could be I’m black and I’m proud, I’m gay and I’m proud, I AM WOMAN, and nobody could fuck with any of us. There was a solidarity, there was a freedom.
The young people took over America and said we have no problems with Gay people , there’s no problem with women, there’s no problem with black people.
Things began to change when Reagan began as president and 25 Years later aids hit.
Everyone went back into the closet and that was the worst thing that could happen in this country because our country was about to become a truly liberated world and America was about to really fulfill its promise of equality of all people because that is where it was going.
There was a good chance that 25 years ago that gay marriage would have been legalized already. I was married in a church in 1976 and it was no thing and people were getting married all over the place. So now I say damn what is all this controversy about.
On one hand you say that gay people are promiscuous because they are having all of this sex. Yet the government will not allow gays to get married so that they can have legalized committed relationships, so the conundrum is something that has been created by this society that you can’t get married so, therefore every time you have sex it is fornication because I’m not married. But you won’t let me be married.
Who’s the idiot? It is as stupid as George Bush not sending his two daughters to war.
Stephen: Do You have any hope for the political climate in the future?
Stanley: Yes, Absolutely, I happen to think that young people are going to elect Barack Obama. As much as I admire to a degree the sharpton’s, the Jesse Jackson’s and all of those people of almost and irrelevant generation, that the new generation has to take over.
Jesse and Al had their place and they had their time. It’s time to move on. Nothing against them but they are elder statesman and that is where they should. Right now I think that the hope of this country is Barack Obama. He will unify this country and not only will he unify this country he will unify the world. After the pittiest situation that is George W Bush where he has made us enemies all across the world, we need someone who can go internationally and show that America is still a compassionate country
In my opinion the only person that can do that is Barack Obama, Hillary can’t do it because of the hate factors, the old school factors, also the factor of the dynasty here and we are not a country of dynasties. Since 1992 this country has been ruled by a Bush or a Clinton. That is to close to royalty and it is time to get rid of that and get some fresh blood.
I think that the ticket is Obama, Edwards and I won’t even say they fact that they are just as cute as they want to be. LOL
You send those two out there to the world and we will retain our position in the world as the compassionate leaders of freedom…… again represented by these two men.
Even if it wasn’t Obama, I would have to go with Edwards and I love Hillary ….
and I thought before Edwards and Obama got into the Race it was Hillary….. Hillary diva #1.
But now my thought are that she looks really old and tired and traditional and old school compared to what needs to happen in 2008. We are barely into 2007 and she looks old and tired so by this time next year comes around she is going to look like hiccabah.
Stephen: So translate that into the black gay community. What do you feel needs to happen to evolve the black gay community?
Stanley: We have to start learning the lessons of some of our non- contributory older folks and we need to stop complaining about the spilt milk. Wipe up the fuckin’ milk! Solutions! It’s all about solutions.
We are a grand proud people. We are a grand proud culture. So why are we not emphasizing that.
By Stephen Andrieux
Kuttinedgeonline.com
Recently kuttinedgeonline.com had the pleasure of meeting up with esteemed author Stanley Bennett Clay to discuss his brand new book “Looker.” We hope you enjoy this insightful look into the life of Stanley and his captivating new book. If you haven’t had the opportunity to purchase his new book check out the kuttinedgeonline.com shopping section and purchase your copy today!.
Stephen: So Stanley, I am so glad that we are able to finally speak. I have been such a strong fan of your work and I am eager to share learning more about the man behind the literature. Where is life like for Stanley after this latest release?
Stanley: I am very comfortable where I am right now. I have had successful careers as an actor writer and as a composer and it has been very rewarding.
The most important thing that I can say right now is that I have great friends and family and health. I have great health on top of everything.
I guess as I reflect on all of my accomplishment, I have to ask myself, how did I luck out to get all of these blessings and I think part of it is that I so humbly appreciate them.
Stephen: What were the challenges in getting to this point in your life?
The challenges, I don’t know if they were challenges. I always thought that my life was pretty boring because I did not have the challenges that other people had.
I had a wonderful mother and a wonderful father who passed away.
I grew up watching them with very little money create this world for themselves and their family and it was not until I became an adult that I was really aware about the turmoil that was happening in a lot of black families, I was kind of like sheltered in that respect.
So the challenges for me were trying to understand other people’s challenges. I think that I try to capture that in my writing. What I’ve done is that I recognize those conflicts and for lack of a better term act as a voyeur, watching what other people were going through and telling those stories.
It was very hard for me to write anything autobiographical because I find my autobiography kind of boring.
But I find what other people are doing very interesting with facing conflicts and things like that.
Stephen: I wouldn’t say that your life is boring; I mean you have written numerous books and plays, been publisher of two magazines and won 3 NAACP awards. That has got to be an exciting experience?
Stanley: Well you know what it is. What’s interesting about winning awards. I have been winning awards all of my life and I think because I write honestly and as an actor I try to act honestly. I try to do things in an honest way and without wanting to do it to get an award. But……. suddenly people want to give me an award for it. Wow! It is just another humbling experience for me. I am always amazed that people think that I was that good that I deserved to win an award. You know it’s just another blessing. I definitely have to say that there are more blessings than challenges.
But if I am to directly answer your question I would have to say the biggest challenges is to keep improving upon myself. As someone says I really your work or I really like this particular book or I like really like this particular play. The challenge becomes to do something better.
That’s the challenge.
Stephen: Where did you get the inspiration for your book?
I always wanted to write about my community in Los Angeles because we don’t see a lot of stories about the black middle class in Los Angeles. It is either South Central or gang banging or it’s the fake and the plastic.
I wanted to chronicle the other world. There is another world that no one ever talks about. It’s the largest black community in Los Angeles which is the Baldwin Hills, Leimert Park, View Park, Area Theses areas are very conservative in living conditions but the community is very liberal and politically active and very powerful. They are very comfortable in their lives but they are not about the bling, bling. They are not about talking about it. They are not very demonstrative. I wanted to tell the story of those people that live in and for all intensive purposes a paradise, because Los Angeles is a paradise.
I wanted to write about this as people don’t get that lifestyle if you were to go by a lot of the literature that’s out there today. So as a result, I said that I want to be this crazy LA writer that writes those stories . I wrote in search of “Pretty Young Black Men” and “Looker” is the continuation of that kind of story. I wanted to write about your average every day well adjusted black homosexual, which we don’t get to enough of. Every Black homosexual is not crazy or sexed up or all this kind of stuff that you see in some of the media portrayals.
Most black homosexuals that I find are in some kind of decent relationship. The one’s that are single maybe that younger one’s but in my generation I find more people in long term committed relationships that are going through what everybody else is going through in a regular relationship. So there is nothing strange about it.
Stephen: So tell my audience a little about “Looker”?
I wanted to tell the story about a guy who faces the challenge that his life is almost too perfect. In his quest throughout this book he searches for the passion that is some how lacking in his life and it takes outside forces to create and to ignite the passion.
It was always their but it was lying dormant.. So that is what the story is really about. How do you ignite passion and realize that the love your life was staring you in the face all the time. He winds up falling in love with his best friend.
Stephen: So what kind of response have you received from the book?
Stanley: An excellent response, the reviews have been really great. Grady Huff, a top ten reviewer on Amazon.com has given it a five star review and Raw Sister book review which is a network of black female writers has given it five stars and a rave review and Clik Magazine has a given it a rave review. So, I’m kind of like taken a back by that cause I know what I went through writing the book and the complexity of writing the book.
So I am proud that it has been well received.
Stephen: How long did it take you to write the book?
Stanley: It didn’t take me a long time, but what I tend to do is write 4 to 5 projects at once. Whichever one gets finished first is the one that goes out next. I don’t even remember when I started it but I said oh, I think that this is finished and turned it into the publisher.
The publisher’s liked it, and I must say that I have to give a lot of credit to my publishers.
Stephen: You’re with Simon & Schuster?
Stanley: Yes.
There is this young editor over there by the name of Rashawn Trotman, who just gave me some insight on the younger generation and taught me how to address certain issues that younger people, people much younger than myself are face with.
So there nothing like a good editor and this young lady really made the book better than it would have been without her input.
Stephen: What do you find to be the difference between the age groups?
Stanley: When I was coming up, there was really no age gaps because the different age groups because the different age groups hung out together.
Stephen: Do you feel that this still goes on?
Stanley: I would have to answer that based on my own personal experience. I tend to have younger friends I find people in my own age category, they tend to be a little cynical, they tend to complain a lot and it ultimately comes down to that when you reach a certain age they are sitting around waiting to die.
The one thing that I like about young people is the optimism. I get energized by that.
There is a great deal of wisdom among older people but also there is a great deal of cynicism.. So, I tend to find young people to hang out with. And as a result even in my relationships. I mean the guy that I have been involved with for the last four years is 24 years old. I find that I learn so much from him and his enthusiasm for life.
Because you see, I’m still young at heart kind of person and I want to be able to talk about the possibilities. the limitless possibilities of life. I really don’t want to have a conversation with someone who has already limited their life and put a cap on it.
Stephen: Well, I was very happy to see that you have come out with another book, because I think that literature is something that our community so needs. How you feel about what it is our younger generation is doing right now?
Stanley: It is a very complex thing for me. On one hand I am very disturbed by the DL situation, I am not as disturbed by the homophobia because I think that this generation is probably less homophobic because they actually understand it a lot better. It is no big deal to a lot of younger people. It’s a big deal to people in the public eye.
The same rappers who are sitting their talking about faggots and homosexuals are the same ones that are getting their ass’s fucked everyday. And the same ones that are out their with every man they can get their hands on.
But those young people who have a sense of self who are real heterosexuals who are real solid in their sexuality they don’t have a problem with it.
They realize that we live in the world that has so much prejudice and that how in the world can you say that someone is a racist and you yourself are homophobic.
Cause if the white man calls you a nigger, if a man calls a woman a bitch, a straight person calls a gay person a faggot, your all in the same hell hole.
What everybody has to understand is that the issues is cross generational. No generation has a lock on that. But I have a lot of hope for young people because I think that when this older generation dies out and a lot of their old fucked up ideas die out. The world will be a better place
You know the thing is that we all have equal sharing in society and I think that young people are beginning to understand it because young people now are getting to know other kinds of people. Thank God for the internet.
Stephen: What have you seen happening throughout the generations coming up?
I think that one of the things and this may contradict something that I said earlier. I do see that the down low thing as damaging because and I say it may contradict something I said earlier because I said that this generation is more enlightened in certain areas. The down low thing is preventing a movement.
I came out as a gay man a year before stonewall in 1968 and at that time when stonewall hit. It was a revolution and at the same time as the gay revolution it was women’s liberation, it was the civil rights movement.
So you had all of these people that white straight constipated America had a thing against. When all three of these events came about and at the same time, there was much more support for each other as a whole. The Black Panther’s were supporting the Gay movement, the women were supporting the gay movement, the gay movement was supporting the women’s movement. Everyone was supporting each other and everyone was marching and protesting.
And you could be I’m black and I’m proud, I’m gay and I’m proud, I AM WOMAN, and nobody could fuck with any of us. There was a solidarity, there was a freedom.
The young people took over America and said we have no problems with Gay people , there’s no problem with women, there’s no problem with black people.
Things began to change when Reagan began as president and 25 Years later aids hit.
Everyone went back into the closet and that was the worst thing that could happen in this country because our country was about to become a truly liberated world and America was about to really fulfill its promise of equality of all people because that is where it was going.
There was a good chance that 25 years ago that gay marriage would have been legalized already. I was married in a church in 1976 and it was no thing and people were getting married all over the place. So now I say damn what is all this controversy about.
On one hand you say that gay people are promiscuous because they are having all of this sex. Yet the government will not allow gays to get married so that they can have legalized committed relationships, so the conundrum is something that has been created by this society that you can’t get married so, therefore every time you have sex it is fornication because I’m not married. But you won’t let me be married.
Who’s the idiot? It is as stupid as George Bush not sending his two daughters to war.
Stephen: Do You have any hope for the political climate in the future?
Stanley: Yes, Absolutely, I happen to think that young people are going to elect Barack Obama. As much as I admire to a degree the sharpton’s, the Jesse Jackson’s and all of those people of almost and irrelevant generation, that the new generation has to take over.
Jesse and Al had their place and they had their time. It’s time to move on. Nothing against them but they are elder statesman and that is where they should. Right now I think that the hope of this country is Barack Obama. He will unify this country and not only will he unify this country he will unify the world. After the pittiest situation that is George W Bush where he has made us enemies all across the world, we need someone who can go internationally and show that America is still a compassionate country
In my opinion the only person that can do that is Barack Obama, Hillary can’t do it because of the hate factors, the old school factors, also the factor of the dynasty here and we are not a country of dynasties. Since 1992 this country has been ruled by a Bush or a Clinton. That is to close to royalty and it is time to get rid of that and get some fresh blood.
I think that the ticket is Obama, Edwards and I won’t even say they fact that they are just as cute as they want to be. LOL
You send those two out there to the world and we will retain our position in the world as the compassionate leaders of freedom…… again represented by these two men.
Even if it wasn’t Obama, I would have to go with Edwards and I love Hillary ….
and I thought before Edwards and Obama got into the Race it was Hillary….. Hillary diva #1.
But now my thought are that she looks really old and tired and traditional and old school compared to what needs to happen in 2008. We are barely into 2007 and she looks old and tired so by this time next year comes around she is going to look like hiccabah.
Stephen: So translate that into the black gay community. What do you feel needs to happen to evolve the black gay community?
Stanley: We have to start learning the lessons of some of our non- contributory older folks and we need to stop complaining about the spilt milk. Wipe up the fuckin’ milk! Solutions! It’s all about solutions.
We are a grand proud people. We are a grand proud culture. So why are we not emphasizing that.
Labels: Features
posted by C.R. Knight on Saturday, September 01, 2007
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