The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.
A Poem
Sparkle-sea, sparkle, do
Stratus-cloud, straddling sky
Nearer on the porch, a curly-white dog
Lying in the sun
Soaks up rays, so he can solar-power his
Trot around the house.
In-between the dog and the sea,
A garbage-truck rumbles by.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Natural Wonders in Ogunquit
The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.
Maine Reconnects Us
...to each other, since during so much of the year, I'm running from work to school to studying and working further, and so this Maine vacation every summer is the balm. It also reconnects us to nature.
This afternoon and eve, we saw a waterfall next Rose Cove; Vine Mina Lobata at the start of Marginal Way; Rose Campion Agrostemma; Dinner Plate Dahlia, which had pink-butter-salmon petals; Milkweed; sea-foam green; and we smelled sea-weed and wet rocks.
Reading Logan's article in today's "New York Times," about how each neighborhood in NYC smells, inpsires me to try to identify a number of the smells of Ogunquit: so far, Stargazer lillies at the John Lennon art exhibit; miniature, deep-purple lilac flowers, which smell like grape hard-candy; hot dogs on a grill; dune-buggy exhaust....
Maine Reconnects Us
...to each other, since during so much of the year, I'm running from work to school to studying and working further, and so this Maine vacation every summer is the balm. It also reconnects us to nature.
This afternoon and eve, we saw a waterfall next Rose Cove; Vine Mina Lobata at the start of Marginal Way; Rose Campion Agrostemma; Dinner Plate Dahlia, which had pink-butter-salmon petals; Milkweed; sea-foam green; and we smelled sea-weed and wet rocks.
Reading Logan's article in today's "New York Times," about how each neighborhood in NYC smells, inpsires me to try to identify a number of the smells of Ogunquit: so far, Stargazer lillies at the John Lennon art exhibit; miniature, deep-purple lilac flowers, which smell like grape hard-candy; hot dogs on a grill; dune-buggy exhaust....
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Aaliyah's Yahrzeit
The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.
A Series of Losses
Yesterday, my mom learned of the death of one of her closest friends. It's Aaliyah's eight-year death anniversary today, which reminds me of a friend who also loved her; my friend lost her baby of blessed memory almost year ago. Tonight, Pat's new Palm 3 cell-phone cracked and broke. Last night, I dreamt that I had to let out a feral cat who got into the house, but didn't want to. Tomorrow, I'm seeing my otosclerosis doctor for the last time; he's retiring at the end of the month. I wonder if Dr. Darius Kohan will be half as appealing a specialist. I wish that my doctor's retirement meant that I was cured of otosclerosis and could stop treatment.
A Series of Gains
A new Shakira tune, "She Wolf," comes on the radio before they announce Aaliyah's deathday and it is almost as fun as Justin Timberlake's "SexyBack" hit. Another gain: I can hear still, rather than being deaf, which could have happened by now with otosclerosis...and still can, but it hasn't yet, thank God. On the way home, I get to speak with Max, one of our nearly 11-year-old nephews; they turn 11 on Friday, gaining age. And now, I hope to gain some sleep.
"Back and Forth." Loss and Gain.
A Series of Losses
Yesterday, my mom learned of the death of one of her closest friends. It's Aaliyah's eight-year death anniversary today, which reminds me of a friend who also loved her; my friend lost her baby of blessed memory almost year ago. Tonight, Pat's new Palm 3 cell-phone cracked and broke. Last night, I dreamt that I had to let out a feral cat who got into the house, but didn't want to. Tomorrow, I'm seeing my otosclerosis doctor for the last time; he's retiring at the end of the month. I wonder if Dr. Darius Kohan will be half as appealing a specialist. I wish that my doctor's retirement meant that I was cured of otosclerosis and could stop treatment.
A Series of Gains
A new Shakira tune, "She Wolf," comes on the radio before they announce Aaliyah's deathday and it is almost as fun as Justin Timberlake's "SexyBack" hit. Another gain: I can hear still, rather than being deaf, which could have happened by now with otosclerosis...and still can, but it hasn't yet, thank God. On the way home, I get to speak with Max, one of our nearly 11-year-old nephews; they turn 11 on Friday, gaining age. And now, I hope to gain some sleep.
"Back and Forth." Loss and Gain.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Destiny
The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.
Kitties Will Be Kitties
It has been nearly 13 months since we adopted Phoebe and Toonces, who are five-year-old, sister-cats. Phoebe was just rooting around in the closet to my left because...she must; Phoebe was made to root.
More than 20 years ago, when I first came out, I learned that it was a truism/stereotype that every [American] lesbian liked playing softball and all of them had cats. I tried softball again in my 20s, even as I had traumatic memories from elementary school, but I resisted the cat concept.
And also failed again at softball.
Softball was one thing, but cats were never going to be part of my household; of that, I was certain. I hated the way their food smelled, how they shed everywhere and their apparent lack of loyalty to the hand that was feeding them.
Lesbians Will Be Lesbians
Circa 2009, I am a loving cat-parent. Cliche or not, they're sweetening Pat's and my life gigantically. They are whimsically/mercurially/only occasionally affectionate, but even just watching their little, baby-tiger bodies walking around the house melts me.
And I feel such a tenderness when I feed them, even though their food does smell awful. Always, they act like they're starving till I put the double-dish down in front of them. And then their twin-ness is the most apparent as they seem to crouch and lap at their Supreme Suppers identically.
I resist writing about them because I sound so mushy-platitudinous.
Being Dog-like Myself
Earlier this week, a dear friend of mine from a faraway timezone said, "Sarah, you're the most honest person I know. You're so trusting and I think you get hurt because of it sometimes. You remind me of a dog who lies on his back, so that we can pet his stomach -- so trusting, but it leaves you vulnerable."
It was a vivid analogy and metaphor. Pat and I talked about it later and realized that being trusting might be one of the traits we have most in common. "I'd rather go through life being too trusting than being cynical," Pat said.
And then another colleague, a relative stranger, asked me to mentor him at work because of another colleague's endorsement: "She said you're passionate, candid and trusting, and that's what I need." That friend is also from a faraway timezone.
In my case, passionate might be a polite way of saying intense, rather than being a euphemism for having a bad temper. Could I change my candid, passionate, trusting nature? Would I want to? Or is it my destiny?
Kitties Will Be Kitties
It has been nearly 13 months since we adopted Phoebe and Toonces, who are five-year-old, sister-cats. Phoebe was just rooting around in the closet to my left because...she must; Phoebe was made to root.
More than 20 years ago, when I first came out, I learned that it was a truism/stereotype that every [American] lesbian liked playing softball and all of them had cats. I tried softball again in my 20s, even as I had traumatic memories from elementary school, but I resisted the cat concept.
And also failed again at softball.
Softball was one thing, but cats were never going to be part of my household; of that, I was certain. I hated the way their food smelled, how they shed everywhere and their apparent lack of loyalty to the hand that was feeding them.
Lesbians Will Be Lesbians
Circa 2009, I am a loving cat-parent. Cliche or not, they're sweetening Pat's and my life gigantically. They are whimsically/mercurially/only occasionally affectionate, but even just watching their little, baby-tiger bodies walking around the house melts me.
And I feel such a tenderness when I feed them, even though their food does smell awful. Always, they act like they're starving till I put the double-dish down in front of them. And then their twin-ness is the most apparent as they seem to crouch and lap at their Supreme Suppers identically.
I resist writing about them because I sound so mushy-platitudinous.
Being Dog-like Myself
Earlier this week, a dear friend of mine from a faraway timezone said, "Sarah, you're the most honest person I know. You're so trusting and I think you get hurt because of it sometimes. You remind me of a dog who lies on his back, so that we can pet his stomach -- so trusting, but it leaves you vulnerable."
It was a vivid analogy and metaphor. Pat and I talked about it later and realized that being trusting might be one of the traits we have most in common. "I'd rather go through life being too trusting than being cynical," Pat said.
And then another colleague, a relative stranger, asked me to mentor him at work because of another colleague's endorsement: "She said you're passionate, candid and trusting, and that's what I need." That friend is also from a faraway timezone.
In my case, passionate might be a polite way of saying intense, rather than being a euphemism for having a bad temper. Could I change my candid, passionate, trusting nature? Would I want to? Or is it my destiny?
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Free Association
The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.
While Watching "Drop Dead Diva"
The main character's body-image issues, Margaret Cho is my hero, I wish I didn't feel alienated by the heterosexual privilege of the show, even as the main character struggles with getting male attention, oh, just in time Jorjet Fox, an openly lesbian actor who's playing heterosexual, she's lovely and the main character has a touching face, Country Club Drive -- there was a street like that, Country Club Road, in my hometown, one of the kids on my bus lived there, I miss Phoebe, the cat, wish she'd lie in my lap while we watch TV, fashion-forward is a great, but stupid, sounding phrase, my nails need filing, for the first time, I enjoyed an essay by David Sedaris, I read it this morning -- I liked his feeding of the kookabura(sp?) bird and the scenes with his dad, I'm afraid of swooping birds, a cicada got into the house last night and I let out a blood-curdlng scream when it landed on my shoulder for a moment, Jorjet Fox is on the stand, she has beautifully broad shoulders, I wonder if she swims, I hope to swim in the morning, Turkish colleague at 9 am, boring to be a lawyer, it would be for me, I'm all about instinct and intuition and big ideas and not data and analysis....
While Watching "Drop Dead Diva"
The main character's body-image issues, Margaret Cho is my hero, I wish I didn't feel alienated by the heterosexual privilege of the show, even as the main character struggles with getting male attention, oh, just in time Jorjet Fox, an openly lesbian actor who's playing heterosexual, she's lovely and the main character has a touching face, Country Club Drive -- there was a street like that, Country Club Road, in my hometown, one of the kids on my bus lived there, I miss Phoebe, the cat, wish she'd lie in my lap while we watch TV, fashion-forward is a great, but stupid, sounding phrase, my nails need filing, for the first time, I enjoyed an essay by David Sedaris, I read it this morning -- I liked his feeding of the kookabura(sp?) bird and the scenes with his dad, I'm afraid of swooping birds, a cicada got into the house last night and I let out a blood-curdlng scream when it landed on my shoulder for a moment, Jorjet Fox is on the stand, she has beautifully broad shoulders, I wonder if she swims, I hope to swim in the morning, Turkish colleague at 9 am, boring to be a lawyer, it would be for me, I'm all about instinct and intuition and big ideas and not data and analysis....
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Busta Move
The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.
To Busta Rhymes
Again, I was 13, skating up Hickory Road with my headphones on, till the lovely Mrs. Strauss stopped me to ask if rollerskating was hard to do with sneaker-skates; they were all the rage in 1978 and she probably was wondering if she should buy a pair.
And then I was 15, skating in front of our second cousins' house in Beit Herut, Israel, as my same-age cousin faced the speakers toward the windows while "Give Me the Night," one of the summer's American hits, blasted on the radio.
And I was 22, 'blading up and down the Chicago lakefront, grooving with my trusty Walgreen-purchased Walkman.
And 31, 'blading to Maxwell in an empty parking lot in Montclair.
And 36, 'blading jauntily along the Thames River in a London suburb during a business trip.
And today at 44, with pure pleasure, 'blading nearly the length of Grove Street and back in Montclair on a Saturday morning, since it had just been freshly paved.
Everywhere I've ever skated, I've always felt free, sexy, graceful, sassy, fluid, lithe, high, endorphin-pumped, powerful, proud, competent, rhythmic, coordinated, deliriously happy....
And then arriving home all sweaty this morning, I performed in front of our house on a street that hasn't been paved in 13 years, and Pat filmed it. And I was only silly and funny, skate-dancing to a Busta Rhymes hit -- always funniest when I least mean to be. And maybe that's how I always look, just silly, but I will always feel how I feel.
To Busta Rhymes
Again, I was 13, skating up Hickory Road with my headphones on, till the lovely Mrs. Strauss stopped me to ask if rollerskating was hard to do with sneaker-skates; they were all the rage in 1978 and she probably was wondering if she should buy a pair.
And then I was 15, skating in front of our second cousins' house in Beit Herut, Israel, as my same-age cousin faced the speakers toward the windows while "Give Me the Night," one of the summer's American hits, blasted on the radio.
And I was 22, 'blading up and down the Chicago lakefront, grooving with my trusty Walgreen-purchased Walkman.
And 31, 'blading to Maxwell in an empty parking lot in Montclair.
And 36, 'blading jauntily along the Thames River in a London suburb during a business trip.
And today at 44, with pure pleasure, 'blading nearly the length of Grove Street and back in Montclair on a Saturday morning, since it had just been freshly paved.
Everywhere I've ever skated, I've always felt free, sexy, graceful, sassy, fluid, lithe, high, endorphin-pumped, powerful, proud, competent, rhythmic, coordinated, deliriously happy....
And then arriving home all sweaty this morning, I performed in front of our house on a street that hasn't been paved in 13 years, and Pat filmed it. And I was only silly and funny, skate-dancing to a Busta Rhymes hit -- always funniest when I least mean to be. And maybe that's how I always look, just silly, but I will always feel how I feel.
My Favorite Sort of Acting
The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.
Women Who Play Gay in Movies
We saw a remarkable movie last night, "HaSodot"/"The Secrets." Neither of the leading ladies were lesbian nor religious in real life, and yet during the film, I really believed their story; they met in an Orthodox Jewish women's seminary in Safed, Israel.
Their attraction to each other felt genuine and so did their engagement in Jewish texts. It was disappointing and impressive at once to see the DVD interviews with the actors because they were very apparently heterosexual and secular, rather than sapphic and religious.
Nobel-prize winner, Isaac Bashevis Singer, would have been proud. He might have written this story, if he were still alive and writing in 2008.
Flashing Back
Watching it reminded me of being 20 and studying Chumash/Bible with, let's call her Shoshannah when I lived in Jerusalem for my junior year of college; I needed remedial help, as we were studying in Hebrew with renowned Bible scholar Nechama Leibowitz, and it was beyond me...but perfectly comfortable for Shoshannah; she was Orthodox and had gone to a yeshivah/Orthodox school through 12th grade, and was in Jerusalem for the year while one of her parents was on sabbatical.
Shoshannah was 17 and guilelessly magnetic. She was the smartest person I met while in Jerusalem that year, with smooth, olive skin and contrasting blue eyes. I earned a poor grade in the class ultimately, but had a stimulating time, doing so.
If she hadn't been Orthodox, and I had been more courageous about my sexual identity back then, and she had been receptive -- lots of "if's," I know -- I would have fallen deeply in love with her, I think, rather than just a bit. After the year was done, we corresponded a few times -- this was pre-e-mail -- and her letters were all about the boyfriend she now had back in the States.
It Feels Good to Be Back
Last week, I was talking to someone who had been an active performance artist and was less so now. She agreed sheepishly when I asked, "So you're a performance artist?"
"Well, yes, but I used to do it more often."
"Neat! You know, I like to think of myself as a writer, but I'm not comfortable saying so aloud typically, and I've found it much easier to say, 'I'm a blogger.' But it's been too long since I've blogged and so now, I feel sheepish about calling myself that, too."
"Everyone needs a hiatus," she replied generously. And as much as that was perhaps just a polite statement on her part, at that moment, it filled me with hope.
Yes! That's where I've been -- on hiatus! This blog is my friend. For years now, I have used it to think aloud and when I am not using it, I feel like my thinking is stoppered and like I might not even be thinking as much, which makes me feel sad and frustrated.
At the moment, I feel happy and nearly sated -- the opposite. "HaSodot"/"The Secrets" opened my writing bottle once more.
Women Who Play Gay in Movies
We saw a remarkable movie last night, "HaSodot"/"The Secrets." Neither of the leading ladies were lesbian nor religious in real life, and yet during the film, I really believed their story; they met in an Orthodox Jewish women's seminary in Safed, Israel.
Their attraction to each other felt genuine and so did their engagement in Jewish texts. It was disappointing and impressive at once to see the DVD interviews with the actors because they were very apparently heterosexual and secular, rather than sapphic and religious.
Nobel-prize winner, Isaac Bashevis Singer, would have been proud. He might have written this story, if he were still alive and writing in 2008.
Flashing Back
Watching it reminded me of being 20 and studying Chumash/Bible with, let's call her Shoshannah when I lived in Jerusalem for my junior year of college; I needed remedial help, as we were studying in Hebrew with renowned Bible scholar Nechama Leibowitz, and it was beyond me...but perfectly comfortable for Shoshannah; she was Orthodox and had gone to a yeshivah/Orthodox school through 12th grade, and was in Jerusalem for the year while one of her parents was on sabbatical.
Shoshannah was 17 and guilelessly magnetic. She was the smartest person I met while in Jerusalem that year, with smooth, olive skin and contrasting blue eyes. I earned a poor grade in the class ultimately, but had a stimulating time, doing so.
If she hadn't been Orthodox, and I had been more courageous about my sexual identity back then, and she had been receptive -- lots of "if's," I know -- I would have fallen deeply in love with her, I think, rather than just a bit. After the year was done, we corresponded a few times -- this was pre-e-mail -- and her letters were all about the boyfriend she now had back in the States.
It Feels Good to Be Back
Last week, I was talking to someone who had been an active performance artist and was less so now. She agreed sheepishly when I asked, "So you're a performance artist?"
"Well, yes, but I used to do it more often."
"Neat! You know, I like to think of myself as a writer, but I'm not comfortable saying so aloud typically, and I've found it much easier to say, 'I'm a blogger.' But it's been too long since I've blogged and so now, I feel sheepish about calling myself that, too."
"Everyone needs a hiatus," she replied generously. And as much as that was perhaps just a polite statement on her part, at that moment, it filled me with hope.
Yes! That's where I've been -- on hiatus! This blog is my friend. For years now, I have used it to think aloud and when I am not using it, I feel like my thinking is stoppered and like I might not even be thinking as much, which makes me feel sad and frustrated.
At the moment, I feel happy and nearly sated -- the opposite. "HaSodot"/"The Secrets" opened my writing bottle once more.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Seventeen Years Together Means...
The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.
A Nice Dinner Out and Facebook in Front of a Rented Movie
I'm desperate for an easy blog-entry, clearly; I've pulled this from my friend Amy's note in Facebook:
"You've been tagged. You are supposed to write a note with the 3's of YOU. At the end, choose people to be tagged. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you - but not in a creepy stalker kind of way, so tag me back please.
(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 3''s of Me, tag 20 people - in the right hand corner of the app - then click publish.)"
Three names I go by:
1. Sarah
2. Katzenelenbogen Koolhoven (Second Life)
3. Rarly (from freshman year of college)
Three jobs I've had in my life:
1. Census enumerator
2. Tech writer of EDI user guides
3. Tibetan butter-sculpture slide imprinter
Three places I've lived:
1. Stamford, CT
2. Jerusalem, Israel
3. Bangalore, India
Three favorite drinks:
1. Water
2. Skim milk
3. Tazo tea
Three TV shows I watch (currently):
1. Nurse Jackie
2. Rescue Me
3. Mad Men
Places I've been:
1. China
2. Thailand
3. Sweden
Three things on my iPod:
1. George Michael
2. Lou Rawls
3. Elvis Costello
Three of my favorite foods:
1. Tandoori ghobi
2. Gorgonzola cheese
3. Lentil soup
Three things I'm looking forward to (nearish future):
1. The end of Summer B semester
2. Vacation in Maine
3. My sister's drash delivery (layperson's sermon) at her synagogue on Saturday.
A Nice Dinner Out and Facebook in Front of a Rented Movie
I'm desperate for an easy blog-entry, clearly; I've pulled this from my friend Amy's note in Facebook:
"You've been tagged. You are supposed to write a note with the 3's of YOU. At the end, choose people to be tagged. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you - but not in a creepy stalker kind of way, so tag me back please.
(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 3''s of Me, tag 20 people - in the right hand corner of the app - then click publish.)"
Three names I go by:
1. Sarah
2. Katzenelenbogen Koolhoven (Second Life)
3. Rarly (from freshman year of college)
Three jobs I've had in my life:
1. Census enumerator
2. Tech writer of EDI user guides
3. Tibetan butter-sculpture slide imprinter
Three places I've lived:
1. Stamford, CT
2. Jerusalem, Israel
3. Bangalore, India
Three favorite drinks:
1. Water
2. Skim milk
3. Tazo tea
Three TV shows I watch (currently):
1. Nurse Jackie
2. Rescue Me
3. Mad Men
Places I've been:
1. China
2. Thailand
3. Sweden
Three things on my iPod:
1. George Michael
2. Lou Rawls
3. Elvis Costello
Three of my favorite foods:
1. Tandoori ghobi
2. Gorgonzola cheese
3. Lentil soup
Three things I'm looking forward to (nearish future):
1. The end of Summer B semester
2. Vacation in Maine
3. My sister's drash delivery (layperson's sermon) at her synagogue on Saturday.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Sad News About a Favorite Author
The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.
E. Lynn Harris is Gone
In July, 2002, I wrote the posting below on IBM's internal online community space for gay, lesbian, bi and trans IBMers and our friends. E. Lynn Harris of blessed memory visited IBM Research in Yorktown Heights, New York in 1998, to talk about his experience as an IBM seller nearly 30 years ago and his transition to writing.
God, he's dead. Look how vital he looks in this photo that I took [not included below, as I cannot locate all of the other three people in the photo to ask their permission to include it]; at the time of that picture, he was a year younger than I am now! He inspired me and gave me perhaps delusional hope: His books were wildly popular and if he could write books after leaving IBM, maybe upon retirement, I could, too, I fantasized. If I am fortunate to stay till my retirement-age, I'll be older than E. Lynn Harris was at the time of his death....Who knows how long anyone lasts?
This is another era, gone. Michael Jackson was my 10s and teens and onward, but E. Lynn Harris got me through the deeply self-searching, KD-Lang-Constant-Craving years. Though his main characters typically were closeted football players, I related to their coming-out struggle and always hoped they'd find peace by the end of the novels; usually, they did.
Thank God for social networking. My partner Pat came up to tell me he had died -- she had just heard it on CNN -- but then I was able to go to Twitter and click on "Lynn Harris" to see a slew of tweets about it. And then I could go to iseecolor.com, since I'm already a member of that social network and was able to post my comment; it's a moderated site and I don't yet see mine appearing, but am hopeful. Meanwhile, I saw lots of grieving women, adding their condolences, and just one man. Everyone but me was black, except for one Latina. I found the most apparently kindred spirit among them, Skyy, a 25-year-old lesbian from a town near Memphis, who said his books helped her come out as a lesbian and as a writer.
Well, here's the writeup from July 30, 2002:
I've included a "USA Today" feature under this [not included here], which focuses on E. Lynn Harris' latest novel and I thought it would be fun to review what he told us when he came to IBM four years ago:
Former IBM sales rep E. Lynn Harris addresses DNGs [IBM's Diversity Network Groups]
E. Lynn Harris, sales rep at IBM from 1977-81 and now author of best-selling fiction, spoke to members of the EAGLE -Tri-State, BlackNet of New York and Spectrum of Poughkeepsie Diversity Network Groups at the Watson Research Center in Yorktown on August 18, 1998. Excerpts of his presentation are included here.
Sarah Siegel, EAGLE - Tri-State Coordinator, introduced Mr. Harris:
I'm delighted that E. Lynn Harris is joining us today for EAGLE's third program in a series.
The Tri-State chapter of the Employee Alliance for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Empowerment at IBM along with BlackNet of New York and the Spectrum of Poughkeepsie black diversity network groups are lucky; we're in a popular part of the country and have an easier time drawing in speakers than some of the more remote chapters. We're also privileged to invite speakers like E. Lynn, who have worked for IBM and feel good and reflective enough about their time here that they're happy to come back as alumni.
I'm especially excited about E. Lynn being here because he's serving as a terrific bridge between our diversity network groups at IBM. I'm also grateful to IBM Research, particularly Kim Sherman, for hosting today's program.
I was first attracted to the fiction of E. Lynn Harris by his book covers. They always feature people who look like they live lives I'd want to read about. The second feature that appealed to me was his bio., which always mentioned his prior role as an IBM sales rep. The third feature was each story itself, especially when it included scenes in Chicago, where I lived for seven years. My favorite feature of E. Lynn Harris' fiction, though, is the complicated quality of his characters' romances.
Last summer, I accompanied my partner Pat on a business trip to Boston. Over the weekend, we visited MIT, including the bookstore. There, prominently displayed among the bestsellers, was the hardcover edition of *If This World Were Mine*. I was proud to see that the product of an IBM alumnus was a hit at MIT.
Of course, it's also nice when products of current IBMers are popular at MIT -- which reminds me to do a brief commercial for a plan I have to produce a series of lunch-time programs beginning this fall called, "How to Be an IBM Leader." It will feature IBMers who have led an interesting team, project or product to market and who are also members of one or another diversity network group at IBM.
That is, I'd like to hear wisdom from people who are leading IBM while at the same time who are proud of their identity. Please contact me if you or any of your colleagues qualify and would like to treat us to a presentation of your positive work
experience.
Meanwhile, I can't wait any longer to hear from someone who led while at IBM and who is now a leader among writers: E. Lynn Harris.
E. Lynn Harris:
I got to IBM in really a 'round-about way. I was majoring in Journalism at the University of Arkansas. I had plans of being a lawyer, not because I had any burning desire to be a lawyer, but because it seemed like a good occupation and in the neighborhood I grew up in, Little Rock, Arkansas, most people were teachers, and lawyers were well-respected, so I thought it would be a good kind of job to have.
I thought I had done everything right. I was the first black, male cheerleader at the University of Arkansas; I was the president of my fraternity; I was in *Who's Who.* I did everything that I needed to do to get into law school and I figured if I was going to go to law school, I was going to go to the best, so I only applied to Harvard.
I didn't get in, but I didn't get rejected. I was in a pending file because I had good grades and OK LSAT scores and all of the activities and stuff that they like, but IBM came up to the University of Arkansas and they were looking for minority students. The only requirement was that if you had a 3.5 or better, they wanted to talk to you. And I had no interest in talking to IBM. The recruiter called my house every day he was up there...He said, "Will you just come by and meet me?"
He told me, "Well, you know about IBM."
I said, "Well, you guys make typewriters, don't you?"
"Yeah, we do that, but we also do some other things...."
It was one of those things that despite my better judgment, even though I would have rather been going across the country to different college campuses, teaching cheerleading [that summer], I took the job at IBM....When I got the bad news from Harvard, IBM said, "We want to offer you a marketing-rep job in Little Rock, Arkansas." I turned them down...because I grew up in Little Rock and wanted to see the rest of the world.
The recruiter said, "Well, where do you want to live?"
As a cheerleader, we used to travel all the time, but we used to always stop in Dallas...and I said, "Dallas."
He said, "Let me call you back," and he called me back 30 minutes later and he said, "We're going to fly you to Dallas tomorrow...."
The problems that I ran into as a salesman the first year -- because I was not out as a gay man -- had to do more with the fact that I was 21 years old, trying to tell people that they needed to spend a million dollars....
I left IBM basically because I wanted to move on. One of the issues or problems I faced as a gay man was that at IBM, I was creating a history that was untrue in terms of my personal life, so it never came up. I always had a girlfriend out of town, and when I got ready to leave, they did not want me to leave. The thing was, well, I'm going to get married and if you guys can't get me a job in Houston, which is where I wanted to go and it was very industry-related; you had to have petroleum experience to get a job as a salesman. I made the 100% club every year that I was there and what have you.
For me it was just a thing of that I had burned out in Dallas and I was still searching for the answers to my life and I spent the next 10 years searching. I went to work for HP. I went to AT&T, sold software for some of the vendors that IBM started going into joint partnerships to sell software with. I could always get a job because I had had that IBM experience.
My first four years with IBM had been successful, so I *never* had a problem getting a job. What I didn't understand was that there was an underlying sadness in my life and I started writing because of that sadness.
One of the things that I used to get compliments at IBM about was the business letters that I wrote. In a sense, that's how I started to write... Also, during this difficult period of mine, I was losing a lot of friends to the AIDS epidemic and one of the things I would do and had always done was to write letters.
You can give so many cards, but these letters would just be letters about our friendship and the things that we had done and I would make them like little stories and the reason that I did that was because I didn't want these people to leave the earth without knowing how I felt. You can give 'em a card saying, "You're a great friend blah blah blah," but I would write these letters, "Remember when we did...."
My mother always used to say that some of the best gifts that I had given to her were some of the letters I had written to her when I didn't have any money for gifts, and a friend of mine who was dying told me how much those letters meant to him and said, "You really ought to try to do something with this. You ought to tell our stories."
It was from reaching rock-bottom that the career in writing started. And even when I wrote the first novel and it was rejected soundly from every major publisher, one of the things you learn as a salesman is rejection, so you find a way around the rejection, and I learned that no didn't always mean no, which a young lady always corrected me, "Unless you're on a date."
And so I just decided to do it on my own and some of the experiences I had had at IBM helped me in being able to self-publish a novel and to go out and market it and to get the word going from some of the things I had learned at IBM marketing training. Also, when [a large publishing company] had heard about me -- heard about this young man, selling books out of his car to beauty shops -- they expressed an interest.
They had rejected my work at first, but an executive vice president had read *Invisible Life *and had fallen in love with it...had seen the book, the self-published edition, in a book store and it was on the best-seller list there because it was Atlanta and this was the only bookstore that was selling it, so it was on the best-seller list because it was the only store where people could get
it in Atlanta.
He bought the book and sent it to this vice president. This guy has since been promoted in [a large publishing company] for, quote-end-quote, discovering me. This lady called me...and all she said when she called was that someone had given her a copy of *Invisible Life* and she enjoyed it and she told me she worked at [a large publishing company].
I was living in Atlanta. She said, "If you're ever in New York, give me a call. I'd like to take you to lunch." That's all she said.
I didn't even have an agent then. So two weeks later, I go to New York and I finally get an agent and the agent tells me what he's going to do, how he's going to contact all of these publishers about how *Invisible Life *was selling underground so to speak. And I asked him, "Is [a large publishing company] one of the companies you're going to send it to?"
He said, "Yeah, yeah, I'll probably send it to [a large publishing company]."
I said, "Well, this lady called me from [a large publishing company]...."
"What's her name?"...I told him the lady's name and he started to laugh, "...She's one of the most powerful women in publishing." He said, "I'm going to give her a call." And he called her and told her he was representing me and she told him she wanted to meet me....
The night before, I did these presentations like I did at IBM, stayed at Kinko's all night, had these presentations on reviews I had gotten; how many books I had sold; why this was a good move for [a large publishing company] to re-package this book; I had all of the sales figures; I had letters; these packets and everything. I put on my best IBM-blue suit, white shirt, red tie, the whole bit, groomed for about an hour before the meeting....
Someone said, "Well, where are we going to start?" There was the executive vice president, there was a senior vice president, who had just discovered John Grisham, an editor and my agent, who I had met only once before and this was the first time my agent had seen me in action and everyone was just looking around the table.
I said, "Why don't I start?" I stood up, passed out the presentation and just went up there full-force and they were standing there with their mouths hanging open. Needless to say, I got a contract the next day.
When my agent went out of the room, and he represents people like Joyce Carol Oates; Alex Hailey over his whole career; Richard Wright, my agent said, "I've never seen anything like that in my life."
"What do you mean?"
"You left them speechless. When you left the room, the first thing they said was, 'He's going to be great when it comes to the big interviewing.'" The first contract with [a large publishing company], looking back on it now, was not an awful lot of money. They got me for three books for $90,000. The way the publishing industry works, it is one of the few industries where they pay you for something they don't have.
Most times, a first-time novelist has to have a finished product, but now, they buy my books based just on an idea. I don't have to give them any kind of proposal. I just say, "I'm going to write about this--" like the book I'm working on now, which is the completion of the first two books. It's going to be the third part of a trilogy.
"Fine," they say. How much money do you want for it? I let my agent do the talking when it comes to that, but...my marketing background helps me because I've been involved in everything.
Writing the book is the easiest part. What a lot of writers don't understand is that you have to get out there and you have to market your book and you have to market yourself, you have to let people know, you have to be available. I mean some of the hardest work that I've done, probably since I left Endicott, is when I'm on tour...when I'm getting up at quarter to five to do an interview with someone who hasn't even read the book....
Countless interviews. And going to different signings. It used to be I had signings where it would be a room -- maybe five or six people and sometimes, in Oregon I had a signing where it was only one and the guy didn't even know why he was there. He just kind of happened upon it -- when I first started out. This last tour, I had signings of over 700 people, and sometimes up to 1,200.
The thing that I realized and the thing that I always focus on is to make sure that number one feels like number 1,200. That's looking a person in the eye -- these are the marketing skills of going in and asking someone to spend a million dollars.
Now, I'm only asking them to spend $24, but it's just as important to look them in the eye and thank them and to tell them how important to me they are because I realize that it's not [a large publishing company] that pays my salary because [a large publishing company] doesn't give me a penny more than what I sell. When they give me advances now, they give me advances based on my track record, which is pretty good.
*Invisible Life *is approaching 500,000 alone for one novel. So now, I do in fact have a track record, but I'm involved in every aspect of the marketing of my novels -- from the design now, to what cities I'm going to go to, to what events I'm going to do, to everything. Like one of the things they wanted to do when I started to get bigger was to say, "We're going to take an ad out in 'The New York Times Book Review'."
I asked, "How much would that cost?" And they told me and I said, "No, we can use the money somewhere else." They were looking at me because a lot of authors with their ego -- they want the full-page ad in the Sunday "New York Times Book Review" and they want the TV ads. I said, "That's not where my audience is. Put it in radio. Put it in putting me out there on the road, so I can look people in the eye."
I mean, because I'm at a point right now where I could just say, "Put a novel out there, don't need to go out and promote it; people are going to buy it just based on reading the novels before," but to me, that would defeat the purpose of what I've worked for.
To me, I still want to tour because it's a way of going out and thanking people who've supported you. When it first started out and I had sold 5,000 or 10,000 books, I almost knew all of those people. When they would tell me they sold 100,000, I wanted to know who these people were and where they lived and how they found out about me.
And even now, I want to be involved in every single thing that goes on with my book. That's one of the reasons I'm here in New York as opposed to Chicago, where I live because as I'm finishing a novel, they're already doing the marketing for a book that will come out in March.
They're already deciding where they're going to send me. They're deciding what TV shows they're going to go for, what magazine people they're going to go for, how they're going to market the book in terms of its direction -- because my audience
has grown.
It not only includes African-American gay men, who are my base, and then African-American women took it over completely; they're still my largest audience -- but I've seen people of other backgrounds.
I recently had a chance to go to Richmond, where people paid money to sit with an author and the lady who sat next to me was this white, mid-50s school principal, who had paid $1,200 to sit next to me and she said she was my biggest fan. She knew things from my book that I had forgotten. I asked her, "How did you discover my books?"
She said, "I'm a principal and a couple of teachers were reading one of the books and told me I had to read it. I read the first one and I was hooked...." So my audience is growing and that makes me very, very happy, but I shall never forget my base....I went to a reading that was supposed to be at a gay bookstore and there were more women there than anything.... The ladies in the front row reminded me of church moms and my grandmother.
I will tell you that the experience at IBM has been most beneficial to me. I learned so many things there. I think the things I learned that were most helpful were some of the social skills, some of the things that I wouldn't have learned at home. I was raised by a single parent. The dress, how to listen...to learn never to be afraid to say, "I don't know," or, "I can find that out," or to think before you speak in terms of making promises....
Someone asked me once where I get my polish from and I said, "From every person that I've ever met," and that is true. At IBM, we used to have a guy in the garage, Leroy...an older, black guy, who was the wisest guy in IBM at Turtle Creek.
...Right now, I have the best job in the world. I'm under a great deal of pressure right now because my novel was due a week ago and it has not ended in my head....But I'll tell you what: I'm having the greatest time. When I look up in my hotel suite and it's 8 o'clock and I've been on the computer since 4, it doesn't seem like I've been working. I'm tired physically, but I'm not tired about the work I've been doing....
This novel's been difficult because I have to avoid becoming a celebrity author. I read about authors like Truman Capote and James Baldwin and I get invited to a lot of different things. Last Sunday, I went to Whitney Houston's birthday party.
I mean I've met a lot of different celebrities who've been fans of mine, so I get invited to a lot of things that it's just good to be at and be seen at, but I've realized, too, that it's the work that's important. It's the writing that I love...so I've had to learn some lessons in time-management....
E. Lynn Harris invited questions and one of the audience requested that he do a reading.
He read pages 5-9 from Chapter 1 of *And This Too Shall Pass,* where Zurich, the main character, calls to tell MamaCee, his grandmother, that he's the NFL's newest starting quarterback, but first has to listen to her regale him with local news about obscure people he doesn't remember.
E. Lynn finished the reading and continued:
This came about from a conversation I had with my own mother. Every Sunday, I called my mom and it never failed that she wanted to tell me about somebody I didn't remember from when I was growing up and that's how the story got started.
Questions from the audience:
What was your reaction when you first heard that IBM was going to give domestic partner benefits to its gay and lesbian employees?
I was pleased. I *would* say that I was kind of surprised. I don't know if any of you have gone through the training thing, but in your first training class, they send you to Endicott and you stay at the Homestead. It was like going into some kind of elite society. When I was there you had to learn the IBM history....it was steeped in tradition and it was like going into an exclusive country club. And being gay was not a consideration. Being black could, at times, be a problem....
How can IBM attract and retain more gay, black talent? More black talent? More gay talent?
...For all of my adult life, I heard the rain of my dreams. And when I say, "I heard the rain," I heard what other people thought I ought to be...I remember telling friends that I had been offered a job by IBM and they were astonished and when I said I was thinking about not taking it, they thought I had lost my mind. I heard the rain. I heard fraternity brothers. I heard family members. I heard the world: IBM. You'd be foolish to turn it down....
It was only when I started to hear the snow, the silent dreams that I heard when I was alone, did magic start to happen in my life....
I don't think IBM would have any problem in keeping gay and lesbian and black employees who are meant to be there because they've always had the reputation for being fair and that's what I found....
I don't think companies like IBM will ever have a problem in attracting the top talent -- if that's what they're supposed to do, if they're supposed to be a salesman or an engineer or a research person, this is a good home. It still has a very, very valuable name.
How can IBM market to the gay, black community, in terms of our products?
It's still top-shelf. IBM is still Rolex. It's still Mercedes. There's competition out there most definitely. I recently bought a laptop and it was between a ThinkPad and a Toshiba. The reason I didn't go with the ThinkPad was that I wanted it small, but I still needed to have the CD-drive and I think you guys have come out with one since then. But I still have friends at IBM and I do a lot of charity work.
This young man, who's a student at Cornell, who grew up in homeless shelters -- someone called me and told me, "This young man's doing well at Cornell, but he needs a computer." We contacted IBM...we ended up buying him a ThinkPad because I really do believe that much is given, much is expected, so the name is still top-quality.
And one of the reasons I still include it in my resume is because it makes people look at you, quote-end-quote, in a different way....When I left IBM, I interviewed for 11 jobs and got offered 10 of them.
Which bookstores are most receptive to your books among the gay, black and mainstream bookstores?
...Gay bookstores would take 10 on consignment...and black bookstores would, too; one of the things that I think has been heartwarming about the whole situation is that black bookstores embraced me almost immediately without reserve, which is not exactly what I expected....
The chains have supported me. They didn't support me at the beginning, but now, you know, I do a lot of signings and most of them have gay and lesbian and African-American sections, but one of the things that being on "The New York Times" best-seller list has helped me with is to move me, quote-end-quote, out of both of those ghettos if you will. What I've found that is so interesting is that they have the gay and lesbian books and the black books back-to-back, in the corner, at the back of some of the stores.
One of the concerns I have is that there might not be another Terri MacMillan or E. Lynn Harris because it's like the music business in the sense that if your first book isn't a hit, then they're going to be hard-pressed to publish your second one no matter how wonderful it is.
A final comment came from one of the [black, male] audience members:
Listening to you speak brought back vivid memories of being a rep in New York City. It's kind of interesting to know that I wasn't the only one.
E. Lynn Harris is Gone
In July, 2002, I wrote the posting below on IBM's internal online community space for gay, lesbian, bi and trans IBMers and our friends. E. Lynn Harris of blessed memory visited IBM Research in Yorktown Heights, New York in 1998, to talk about his experience as an IBM seller nearly 30 years ago and his transition to writing.
God, he's dead. Look how vital he looks in this photo that I took [not included below, as I cannot locate all of the other three people in the photo to ask their permission to include it]; at the time of that picture, he was a year younger than I am now! He inspired me and gave me perhaps delusional hope: His books were wildly popular and if he could write books after leaving IBM, maybe upon retirement, I could, too, I fantasized. If I am fortunate to stay till my retirement-age, I'll be older than E. Lynn Harris was at the time of his death....Who knows how long anyone lasts?
This is another era, gone. Michael Jackson was my 10s and teens and onward, but E. Lynn Harris got me through the deeply self-searching, KD-Lang-Constant-Craving years. Though his main characters typically were closeted football players, I related to their coming-out struggle and always hoped they'd find peace by the end of the novels; usually, they did.
Thank God for social networking. My partner Pat came up to tell me he had died -- she had just heard it on CNN -- but then I was able to go to Twitter and click on "Lynn Harris" to see a slew of tweets about it. And then I could go to iseecolor.com, since I'm already a member of that social network and was able to post my comment; it's a moderated site and I don't yet see mine appearing, but am hopeful. Meanwhile, I saw lots of grieving women, adding their condolences, and just one man. Everyone but me was black, except for one Latina. I found the most apparently kindred spirit among them, Skyy, a 25-year-old lesbian from a town near Memphis, who said his books helped her come out as a lesbian and as a writer.
Well, here's the writeup from July 30, 2002:
I've included a "USA Today" feature under this [not included here], which focuses on E. Lynn Harris' latest novel and I thought it would be fun to review what he told us when he came to IBM four years ago:
Former IBM sales rep E. Lynn Harris addresses DNGs [IBM's Diversity Network Groups]
E. Lynn Harris, sales rep at IBM from 1977-81 and now author of best-selling fiction, spoke to members of the EAGLE -Tri-State, BlackNet of New York and Spectrum of Poughkeepsie Diversity Network Groups at the Watson Research Center in Yorktown on August 18, 1998. Excerpts of his presentation are included here.
Sarah Siegel, EAGLE - Tri-State Coordinator, introduced Mr. Harris:
I'm delighted that E. Lynn Harris is joining us today for EAGLE's third program in a series.
The Tri-State chapter of the Employee Alliance for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Empowerment at IBM along with BlackNet of New York and the Spectrum of Poughkeepsie black diversity network groups are lucky; we're in a popular part of the country and have an easier time drawing in speakers than some of the more remote chapters. We're also privileged to invite speakers like E. Lynn, who have worked for IBM and feel good and reflective enough about their time here that they're happy to come back as alumni.
I'm especially excited about E. Lynn being here because he's serving as a terrific bridge between our diversity network groups at IBM. I'm also grateful to IBM Research, particularly Kim Sherman, for hosting today's program.
I was first attracted to the fiction of E. Lynn Harris by his book covers. They always feature people who look like they live lives I'd want to read about. The second feature that appealed to me was his bio., which always mentioned his prior role as an IBM sales rep. The third feature was each story itself, especially when it included scenes in Chicago, where I lived for seven years. My favorite feature of E. Lynn Harris' fiction, though, is the complicated quality of his characters' romances.
Last summer, I accompanied my partner Pat on a business trip to Boston. Over the weekend, we visited MIT, including the bookstore. There, prominently displayed among the bestsellers, was the hardcover edition of *If This World Were Mine*. I was proud to see that the product of an IBM alumnus was a hit at MIT.
Of course, it's also nice when products of current IBMers are popular at MIT -- which reminds me to do a brief commercial for a plan I have to produce a series of lunch-time programs beginning this fall called, "How to Be an IBM Leader." It will feature IBMers who have led an interesting team, project or product to market and who are also members of one or another diversity network group at IBM.
That is, I'd like to hear wisdom from people who are leading IBM while at the same time who are proud of their identity. Please contact me if you or any of your colleagues qualify and would like to treat us to a presentation of your positive work
experience.
Meanwhile, I can't wait any longer to hear from someone who led while at IBM and who is now a leader among writers: E. Lynn Harris.
E. Lynn Harris:
I got to IBM in really a 'round-about way. I was majoring in Journalism at the University of Arkansas. I had plans of being a lawyer, not because I had any burning desire to be a lawyer, but because it seemed like a good occupation and in the neighborhood I grew up in, Little Rock, Arkansas, most people were teachers, and lawyers were well-respected, so I thought it would be a good kind of job to have.
I thought I had done everything right. I was the first black, male cheerleader at the University of Arkansas; I was the president of my fraternity; I was in *Who's Who.* I did everything that I needed to do to get into law school and I figured if I was going to go to law school, I was going to go to the best, so I only applied to Harvard.
I didn't get in, but I didn't get rejected. I was in a pending file because I had good grades and OK LSAT scores and all of the activities and stuff that they like, but IBM came up to the University of Arkansas and they were looking for minority students. The only requirement was that if you had a 3.5 or better, they wanted to talk to you. And I had no interest in talking to IBM. The recruiter called my house every day he was up there...He said, "Will you just come by and meet me?"
He told me, "Well, you know about IBM."
I said, "Well, you guys make typewriters, don't you?"
"Yeah, we do that, but we also do some other things...."
It was one of those things that despite my better judgment, even though I would have rather been going across the country to different college campuses, teaching cheerleading [that summer], I took the job at IBM....When I got the bad news from Harvard, IBM said, "We want to offer you a marketing-rep job in Little Rock, Arkansas." I turned them down...because I grew up in Little Rock and wanted to see the rest of the world.
The recruiter said, "Well, where do you want to live?"
As a cheerleader, we used to travel all the time, but we used to always stop in Dallas...and I said, "Dallas."
He said, "Let me call you back," and he called me back 30 minutes later and he said, "We're going to fly you to Dallas tomorrow...."
The problems that I ran into as a salesman the first year -- because I was not out as a gay man -- had to do more with the fact that I was 21 years old, trying to tell people that they needed to spend a million dollars....
I left IBM basically because I wanted to move on. One of the issues or problems I faced as a gay man was that at IBM, I was creating a history that was untrue in terms of my personal life, so it never came up. I always had a girlfriend out of town, and when I got ready to leave, they did not want me to leave. The thing was, well, I'm going to get married and if you guys can't get me a job in Houston, which is where I wanted to go and it was very industry-related; you had to have petroleum experience to get a job as a salesman. I made the 100% club every year that I was there and what have you.
For me it was just a thing of that I had burned out in Dallas and I was still searching for the answers to my life and I spent the next 10 years searching. I went to work for HP. I went to AT&T, sold software for some of the vendors that IBM started going into joint partnerships to sell software with. I could always get a job because I had had that IBM experience.
My first four years with IBM had been successful, so I *never* had a problem getting a job. What I didn't understand was that there was an underlying sadness in my life and I started writing because of that sadness.
One of the things that I used to get compliments at IBM about was the business letters that I wrote. In a sense, that's how I started to write... Also, during this difficult period of mine, I was losing a lot of friends to the AIDS epidemic and one of the things I would do and had always done was to write letters.
You can give so many cards, but these letters would just be letters about our friendship and the things that we had done and I would make them like little stories and the reason that I did that was because I didn't want these people to leave the earth without knowing how I felt. You can give 'em a card saying, "You're a great friend blah blah blah," but I would write these letters, "Remember when we did...."
My mother always used to say that some of the best gifts that I had given to her were some of the letters I had written to her when I didn't have any money for gifts, and a friend of mine who was dying told me how much those letters meant to him and said, "You really ought to try to do something with this. You ought to tell our stories."
It was from reaching rock-bottom that the career in writing started. And even when I wrote the first novel and it was rejected soundly from every major publisher, one of the things you learn as a salesman is rejection, so you find a way around the rejection, and I learned that no didn't always mean no, which a young lady always corrected me, "Unless you're on a date."
And so I just decided to do it on my own and some of the experiences I had had at IBM helped me in being able to self-publish a novel and to go out and market it and to get the word going from some of the things I had learned at IBM marketing training. Also, when [a large publishing company] had heard about me -- heard about this young man, selling books out of his car to beauty shops -- they expressed an interest.
They had rejected my work at first, but an executive vice president had read *Invisible Life *and had fallen in love with it...had seen the book, the self-published edition, in a book store and it was on the best-seller list there because it was Atlanta and this was the only bookstore that was selling it, so it was on the best-seller list because it was the only store where people could get
it in Atlanta.
He bought the book and sent it to this vice president. This guy has since been promoted in [a large publishing company] for, quote-end-quote, discovering me. This lady called me...and all she said when she called was that someone had given her a copy of *Invisible Life* and she enjoyed it and she told me she worked at [a large publishing company].
I was living in Atlanta. She said, "If you're ever in New York, give me a call. I'd like to take you to lunch." That's all she said.
I didn't even have an agent then. So two weeks later, I go to New York and I finally get an agent and the agent tells me what he's going to do, how he's going to contact all of these publishers about how *Invisible Life *was selling underground so to speak. And I asked him, "Is [a large publishing company] one of the companies you're going to send it to?"
He said, "Yeah, yeah, I'll probably send it to [a large publishing company]."
I said, "Well, this lady called me from [a large publishing company]...."
"What's her name?"...I told him the lady's name and he started to laugh, "...She's one of the most powerful women in publishing." He said, "I'm going to give her a call." And he called her and told her he was representing me and she told him she wanted to meet me....
The night before, I did these presentations like I did at IBM, stayed at Kinko's all night, had these presentations on reviews I had gotten; how many books I had sold; why this was a good move for [a large publishing company] to re-package this book; I had all of the sales figures; I had letters; these packets and everything. I put on my best IBM-blue suit, white shirt, red tie, the whole bit, groomed for about an hour before the meeting....
Someone said, "Well, where are we going to start?" There was the executive vice president, there was a senior vice president, who had just discovered John Grisham, an editor and my agent, who I had met only once before and this was the first time my agent had seen me in action and everyone was just looking around the table.
I said, "Why don't I start?" I stood up, passed out the presentation and just went up there full-force and they were standing there with their mouths hanging open. Needless to say, I got a contract the next day.
When my agent went out of the room, and he represents people like Joyce Carol Oates; Alex Hailey over his whole career; Richard Wright, my agent said, "I've never seen anything like that in my life."
"What do you mean?"
"You left them speechless. When you left the room, the first thing they said was, 'He's going to be great when it comes to the big interviewing.'" The first contract with [a large publishing company], looking back on it now, was not an awful lot of money. They got me for three books for $90,000. The way the publishing industry works, it is one of the few industries where they pay you for something they don't have.
Most times, a first-time novelist has to have a finished product, but now, they buy my books based just on an idea. I don't have to give them any kind of proposal. I just say, "I'm going to write about this--" like the book I'm working on now, which is the completion of the first two books. It's going to be the third part of a trilogy.
"Fine," they say. How much money do you want for it? I let my agent do the talking when it comes to that, but...my marketing background helps me because I've been involved in everything.
Writing the book is the easiest part. What a lot of writers don't understand is that you have to get out there and you have to market your book and you have to market yourself, you have to let people know, you have to be available. I mean some of the hardest work that I've done, probably since I left Endicott, is when I'm on tour...when I'm getting up at quarter to five to do an interview with someone who hasn't even read the book....
Countless interviews. And going to different signings. It used to be I had signings where it would be a room -- maybe five or six people and sometimes, in Oregon I had a signing where it was only one and the guy didn't even know why he was there. He just kind of happened upon it -- when I first started out. This last tour, I had signings of over 700 people, and sometimes up to 1,200.
The thing that I realized and the thing that I always focus on is to make sure that number one feels like number 1,200. That's looking a person in the eye -- these are the marketing skills of going in and asking someone to spend a million dollars.
Now, I'm only asking them to spend $24, but it's just as important to look them in the eye and thank them and to tell them how important to me they are because I realize that it's not [a large publishing company] that pays my salary because [a large publishing company] doesn't give me a penny more than what I sell. When they give me advances now, they give me advances based on my track record, which is pretty good.
*Invisible Life *is approaching 500,000 alone for one novel. So now, I do in fact have a track record, but I'm involved in every aspect of the marketing of my novels -- from the design now, to what cities I'm going to go to, to what events I'm going to do, to everything. Like one of the things they wanted to do when I started to get bigger was to say, "We're going to take an ad out in 'The New York Times Book Review'."
I asked, "How much would that cost?" And they told me and I said, "No, we can use the money somewhere else." They were looking at me because a lot of authors with their ego -- they want the full-page ad in the Sunday "New York Times Book Review" and they want the TV ads. I said, "That's not where my audience is. Put it in radio. Put it in putting me out there on the road, so I can look people in the eye."
I mean, because I'm at a point right now where I could just say, "Put a novel out there, don't need to go out and promote it; people are going to buy it just based on reading the novels before," but to me, that would defeat the purpose of what I've worked for.
To me, I still want to tour because it's a way of going out and thanking people who've supported you. When it first started out and I had sold 5,000 or 10,000 books, I almost knew all of those people. When they would tell me they sold 100,000, I wanted to know who these people were and where they lived and how they found out about me.
And even now, I want to be involved in every single thing that goes on with my book. That's one of the reasons I'm here in New York as opposed to Chicago, where I live because as I'm finishing a novel, they're already doing the marketing for a book that will come out in March.
They're already deciding where they're going to send me. They're deciding what TV shows they're going to go for, what magazine people they're going to go for, how they're going to market the book in terms of its direction -- because my audience
has grown.
It not only includes African-American gay men, who are my base, and then African-American women took it over completely; they're still my largest audience -- but I've seen people of other backgrounds.
I recently had a chance to go to Richmond, where people paid money to sit with an author and the lady who sat next to me was this white, mid-50s school principal, who had paid $1,200 to sit next to me and she said she was my biggest fan. She knew things from my book that I had forgotten. I asked her, "How did you discover my books?"
She said, "I'm a principal and a couple of teachers were reading one of the books and told me I had to read it. I read the first one and I was hooked...." So my audience is growing and that makes me very, very happy, but I shall never forget my base....I went to a reading that was supposed to be at a gay bookstore and there were more women there than anything.... The ladies in the front row reminded me of church moms and my grandmother.
I will tell you that the experience at IBM has been most beneficial to me. I learned so many things there. I think the things I learned that were most helpful were some of the social skills, some of the things that I wouldn't have learned at home. I was raised by a single parent. The dress, how to listen...to learn never to be afraid to say, "I don't know," or, "I can find that out," or to think before you speak in terms of making promises....
Someone asked me once where I get my polish from and I said, "From every person that I've ever met," and that is true. At IBM, we used to have a guy in the garage, Leroy...an older, black guy, who was the wisest guy in IBM at Turtle Creek.
...Right now, I have the best job in the world. I'm under a great deal of pressure right now because my novel was due a week ago and it has not ended in my head....But I'll tell you what: I'm having the greatest time. When I look up in my hotel suite and it's 8 o'clock and I've been on the computer since 4, it doesn't seem like I've been working. I'm tired physically, but I'm not tired about the work I've been doing....
This novel's been difficult because I have to avoid becoming a celebrity author. I read about authors like Truman Capote and James Baldwin and I get invited to a lot of different things. Last Sunday, I went to Whitney Houston's birthday party.
I mean I've met a lot of different celebrities who've been fans of mine, so I get invited to a lot of things that it's just good to be at and be seen at, but I've realized, too, that it's the work that's important. It's the writing that I love...so I've had to learn some lessons in time-management....
E. Lynn Harris invited questions and one of the audience requested that he do a reading.
He read pages 5-9 from Chapter 1 of *And This Too Shall Pass,* where Zurich, the main character, calls to tell MamaCee, his grandmother, that he's the NFL's newest starting quarterback, but first has to listen to her regale him with local news about obscure people he doesn't remember.
E. Lynn finished the reading and continued:
This came about from a conversation I had with my own mother. Every Sunday, I called my mom and it never failed that she wanted to tell me about somebody I didn't remember from when I was growing up and that's how the story got started.
Questions from the audience:
What was your reaction when you first heard that IBM was going to give domestic partner benefits to its gay and lesbian employees?
I was pleased. I *would* say that I was kind of surprised. I don't know if any of you have gone through the training thing, but in your first training class, they send you to Endicott and you stay at the Homestead. It was like going into some kind of elite society. When I was there you had to learn the IBM history....it was steeped in tradition and it was like going into an exclusive country club. And being gay was not a consideration. Being black could, at times, be a problem....
How can IBM attract and retain more gay, black talent? More black talent? More gay talent?
...For all of my adult life, I heard the rain of my dreams. And when I say, "I heard the rain," I heard what other people thought I ought to be...I remember telling friends that I had been offered a job by IBM and they were astonished and when I said I was thinking about not taking it, they thought I had lost my mind. I heard the rain. I heard fraternity brothers. I heard family members. I heard the world: IBM. You'd be foolish to turn it down....
It was only when I started to hear the snow, the silent dreams that I heard when I was alone, did magic start to happen in my life....
I don't think IBM would have any problem in keeping gay and lesbian and black employees who are meant to be there because they've always had the reputation for being fair and that's what I found....
I don't think companies like IBM will ever have a problem in attracting the top talent -- if that's what they're supposed to do, if they're supposed to be a salesman or an engineer or a research person, this is a good home. It still has a very, very valuable name.
How can IBM market to the gay, black community, in terms of our products?
It's still top-shelf. IBM is still Rolex. It's still Mercedes. There's competition out there most definitely. I recently bought a laptop and it was between a ThinkPad and a Toshiba. The reason I didn't go with the ThinkPad was that I wanted it small, but I still needed to have the CD-drive and I think you guys have come out with one since then. But I still have friends at IBM and I do a lot of charity work.
This young man, who's a student at Cornell, who grew up in homeless shelters -- someone called me and told me, "This young man's doing well at Cornell, but he needs a computer." We contacted IBM...we ended up buying him a ThinkPad because I really do believe that much is given, much is expected, so the name is still top-quality.
And one of the reasons I still include it in my resume is because it makes people look at you, quote-end-quote, in a different way....When I left IBM, I interviewed for 11 jobs and got offered 10 of them.
Which bookstores are most receptive to your books among the gay, black and mainstream bookstores?
...Gay bookstores would take 10 on consignment...and black bookstores would, too; one of the things that I think has been heartwarming about the whole situation is that black bookstores embraced me almost immediately without reserve, which is not exactly what I expected....
The chains have supported me. They didn't support me at the beginning, but now, you know, I do a lot of signings and most of them have gay and lesbian and African-American sections, but one of the things that being on "The New York Times" best-seller list has helped me with is to move me, quote-end-quote, out of both of those ghettos if you will. What I've found that is so interesting is that they have the gay and lesbian books and the black books back-to-back, in the corner, at the back of some of the stores.
One of the concerns I have is that there might not be another Terri MacMillan or E. Lynn Harris because it's like the music business in the sense that if your first book isn't a hit, then they're going to be hard-pressed to publish your second one no matter how wonderful it is.
A final comment came from one of the [black, male] audience members:
Listening to you speak brought back vivid memories of being a rep in New York City. It's kind of interesting to know that I wasn't the only one.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Observing My Grief
The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.
With Apologies to C.S. Lewis
"I feel sad," I told a friend tonight.
"Feel it," she said.
"Yeah, otherwise, the grief just comes back and bites me...." I agreed. Here is why I am sad:
None of the sororities at the University of Michigan asked me to pledge when I rushed in 1983.
Last night, on the way out of class, while exiting Columbia University's Teachers College, where my employer graciously is sponsoring my Masters, I dialed a college-friend and said, "I'm walking out of this great university to my fancy Volvo in an Armani suit and I feel awful....In class, in small groups, we analyzed an article by a black lesbian around my age, about how she joined and then quit a sorority at the U. of I. in the '80s....I have all of this stuff and yet none of it can keep me from feeling second-class."
When we were University of Michigan dormmates, my friend was incredulous that I went through Rush. She never really knew how devastating an experience it was for me. And the extra indignity of having a gorgeous, random roommate sophomore year, who pledged the Tri-Delt sorority, tied with Chi Omega as the top sorority on campus. Her mainstreamness, and that of the beautiful friends -- her sorority sisters who would stop by our room too routinely -- opened my Freshman wound, which festered all year long; living with such a perfect woman, I proved awkward with a mean edge.
That summer, as part of a birthday present, my friend thought she was funny by sending me a whole pad of Delta Delta Delta stationery, with a "Ghostbusters" symbol through the three deltas on the top of every page. I laughed along even as I still felt ashamed that I had not even remotely qualified to join that club.
Outsider Status-symbols
During class last night, our professor showed us amazing clips from "The Way Home," by the World Trust, which highlighted exclusionary experiences of biracial women from a variety of cultures -- a very different sort of sorority. Afterwards, one of my classmates spoke of her experience, growing up in Japan with a Portuguese father and of her own half-White daughter's experience of going to Japanese School on Saturdays.
My classmate's story encouraged me to talk about what I hadn't discussed when we were explicating the "Sistah Outsider" article. I raised my hand.
"Yes, Sarah?"
"I appreciated Cathy's story and it made me want to say a couple of things. In another class, I had a classmate, who grew up as half-WASP and half-Jewish and she said she envied me my solid identity, and I couldn't imagine anyone, considering me privileged for being *Jewish,* a tiny minority that's had to move all over the place throughout history." Sarah, be courageous. Say what you really want to say, I told myself.
"And I didn't say this during the window when we were talking about the 'Sistah Outsider" article--"
"That's OK," said my professor in a kindly tone.
"But I really related to her story, except that I'm Jewish and she's black. I remember thinking, Should I try to get into the WASPiest sorority possible, or should I aim for at least the more prestigious of the two Jewish sororities? What if the friendlier, but less prestigious, one invited me to pledge?
If I got into a sorority, it would be proof that I was a real woman, and I could escape my lesbianism, I reasoned. And then I was invited back to the next round only by the least desirable sorority on campus. [Choking up,] My mom had been in a sorority [that wasn't on my campus....]." How raw I felt!
A Layer-cake, Layered with Shame
It was always a layered shame for me -- my wish to be a sorority-girl: I was ashamed that I wanted to join a sorority; ashamed that none would have me; ashamed that I really believed I could prove my heterosexuality through sorority membership. If anything, it would have been a far more difficult place to try to hide my lesbianism.
I never felt lonelier those first several weeks of Freshman year than when I would put on a skirt, leave all of my new friends behind at the dorm, all of whom thought sororities were ill-suited to their sensibilities, and ride the bus from North Campus to Washtenaw Avenue, or Sorority/Fraternity Row. My father was dead, I was in a new place, where I'd never been till Day 1 of Freshman year, never having moved at all, and nourishing a dream of universal popularity and highly-visible good-deeds.
One of the sororities -- the one that had the cartoonist of Cathy among its alumna if I remember correctly -- promised that the next round of Rush would feature an peppermint social. I could taste the ice cream as the interviewer spoke. I never did get to, though.
With Apologies to C.S. Lewis
"I feel sad," I told a friend tonight.
"Feel it," she said.
"Yeah, otherwise, the grief just comes back and bites me...." I agreed. Here is why I am sad:
None of the sororities at the University of Michigan asked me to pledge when I rushed in 1983.
Last night, on the way out of class, while exiting Columbia University's Teachers College, where my employer graciously is sponsoring my Masters, I dialed a college-friend and said, "I'm walking out of this great university to my fancy Volvo in an Armani suit and I feel awful....In class, in small groups, we analyzed an article by a black lesbian around my age, about how she joined and then quit a sorority at the U. of I. in the '80s....I have all of this stuff and yet none of it can keep me from feeling second-class."
When we were University of Michigan dormmates, my friend was incredulous that I went through Rush. She never really knew how devastating an experience it was for me. And the extra indignity of having a gorgeous, random roommate sophomore year, who pledged the Tri-Delt sorority, tied with Chi Omega as the top sorority on campus. Her mainstreamness, and that of the beautiful friends -- her sorority sisters who would stop by our room too routinely -- opened my Freshman wound, which festered all year long; living with such a perfect woman, I proved awkward with a mean edge.
That summer, as part of a birthday present, my friend thought she was funny by sending me a whole pad of Delta Delta Delta stationery, with a "Ghostbusters" symbol through the three deltas on the top of every page. I laughed along even as I still felt ashamed that I had not even remotely qualified to join that club.
Outsider Status-symbols
During class last night, our professor showed us amazing clips from "The Way Home," by the World Trust, which highlighted exclusionary experiences of biracial women from a variety of cultures -- a very different sort of sorority. Afterwards, one of my classmates spoke of her experience, growing up in Japan with a Portuguese father and of her own half-White daughter's experience of going to Japanese School on Saturdays.
My classmate's story encouraged me to talk about what I hadn't discussed when we were explicating the "Sistah Outsider" article. I raised my hand.
"Yes, Sarah?"
"I appreciated Cathy's story and it made me want to say a couple of things. In another class, I had a classmate, who grew up as half-WASP and half-Jewish and she said she envied me my solid identity, and I couldn't imagine anyone, considering me privileged for being *Jewish,* a tiny minority that's had to move all over the place throughout history." Sarah, be courageous. Say what you really want to say, I told myself.
"And I didn't say this during the window when we were talking about the 'Sistah Outsider" article--"
"That's OK," said my professor in a kindly tone.
"But I really related to her story, except that I'm Jewish and she's black. I remember thinking, Should I try to get into the WASPiest sorority possible, or should I aim for at least the more prestigious of the two Jewish sororities? What if the friendlier, but less prestigious, one invited me to pledge?
If I got into a sorority, it would be proof that I was a real woman, and I could escape my lesbianism, I reasoned. And then I was invited back to the next round only by the least desirable sorority on campus. [Choking up,] My mom had been in a sorority [that wasn't on my campus....]." How raw I felt!
A Layer-cake, Layered with Shame
It was always a layered shame for me -- my wish to be a sorority-girl: I was ashamed that I wanted to join a sorority; ashamed that none would have me; ashamed that I really believed I could prove my heterosexuality through sorority membership. If anything, it would have been a far more difficult place to try to hide my lesbianism.
I never felt lonelier those first several weeks of Freshman year than when I would put on a skirt, leave all of my new friends behind at the dorm, all of whom thought sororities were ill-suited to their sensibilities, and ride the bus from North Campus to Washtenaw Avenue, or Sorority/Fraternity Row. My father was dead, I was in a new place, where I'd never been till Day 1 of Freshman year, never having moved at all, and nourishing a dream of universal popularity and highly-visible good-deeds.
One of the sororities -- the one that had the cartoonist of Cathy among its alumna if I remember correctly -- promised that the next round of Rush would feature an peppermint social. I could taste the ice cream as the interviewer spoke. I never did get to, though.
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