B-Boy Blues

From Booklist Mitchell Crawford's fantasy has always been to have a B-boy. For him, B-boys stand on street corners daring anyone to invade their territory, dress to thrill, move to a rhythm all their own, and, loud and boisterous, "speak to be heard, not so much to be understood." Now, you don't think of any tough black street boy as being gay, don't often read about very different segments of the black community in contact with one another, and, if you're white, don't often encounter black narrators who honestly tell how they feel about whites. You do here. Mitchell is young, black, educated, and gay. He works on a magazine, lives in a nice Manhattan apartment, and runs around with a group of men like himself. He has flings with two other B-boys, then meets Raheim, the man of his dreams in this first-rate love story. Supporting characters--Raheim's son and Mitchell's family and work friends--add to the plot and the realism as Hardy reveals much about what happens when two cultures meet and more about diversity than you get from most diversity workshops. Highly recommended for both gay- and black-literature collections. Charles Harmon