Publisher Description

First published by St Martin's Press in 1986, Blackbird is a funny, moving coming-of-age novel about growing up black and gay in southern California. The lead character, Johnnie Ray Rousseau, is a high school student upset at losing the lead role in the school staging of Romeo and Juliet. As if that weren't enough, his best friend has been beaten badly by his father and his girlfriend is pressuring him to have sex for the first time. All the while, he's intrigued by Marshall MacNeill, whom he meets at an audition and is surely the sexiest man ever.

Author Biography

Larry Duplechan is the author of five novels, including Captain Swing, Tangled Up in Blue, and Got 'til It's Gone, winner of a Lambda Literary Award in 2009. A graduate of UCLA, he lives in his hometown of Los Angeles with his partner of more than 30 years.

Description for Sales People

First published in 1986 by St. Martin's Press, this is a new edition of the 2006 update published as part of Arsenal's Little Sister's Classics of classic LGBT books resurrected for new audiences. It is being reissued with a new afterword by Patrik-Ian Polk, director of a new film based on the book, co-starring Oscar winner Mo'Nique, Isaiah Washington, and Julian Walker. The film will be release in the US in late April 2015 in selected theaters and on VOD. Polk's afterword focuses on how he discovered the novel at the Harvard Coop Bookstore in Boston as a college student, and how it helped him to get through some rough years due to its honest and hopeful portrait of a young gay black man. In 1986, Blackbird was a unique novel: a moving and romantic story about the gay black experience. At the time it was marketed as an adult fiction title, but 30 years later, the book can be fully embraced as the young adult novel it really is. Duplechan's original novel takes place in southern California, where the author has lived for most of his life; the film, however, takes place in Mississippi, director Polk's home state.

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