|
| Hiding in Hip Hop: On the Down Low in the Entertainment Industry--from Music to Hollywood | 
 enlarge | Author: Terrance Dean
Publisher: Atria
Category: Book
List Price: $23.00
Buy New: $13.32
You Save: $9.68 (42%)
New (41) Used (16) from $13.01
Avg. Customer Rating:  39 reviews
Sales Rank: 19522
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st Atria Books Hardcover Ed
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6 x 1.3
ISBN: 1416553398
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.765092
EAN: 9781416553397
ASIN: 1416553398
Publication Date: May 13, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20081121221340T
|
| Customer Reviews:
 Keep It on the Down Lowwww!! May 23, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
i was anxiously awaiting the release of this book and i was thrilled when amazon received it early. once i began reading this book, i was shocked to discover that he used monikers instead of giving actual names. i really wanted to know the names of the gay rappers and other allegedly gay entertainers that the media speculates about. altogether, this was an enjoyable read because he spares no details when it comes to his life. this book would've been a 5 star had the timeline not been all over the place and he would have given out the actual names of his lovers and the other men and women who were part of his downlow circle.
3.5 stars
 Poorly Written and Ultimately Lacking a Point May 25, 2008
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Terrance Dean makes it sound as if he is about to provide the reader with insight into the real goings on in Hip Hop and the entertainment industry in general, but what he provides is a disjointed look at his life. While I am not among those who wishes he named names (he has no right to do that unless he is trying to protect someone in danger), I wished that he told us more than men often become homosexuals because they are molested and their families refuse to deal with the event or that men cheat on their wives and girlfriends with other men. All of this is already known. What I wished he had done was provide some real understanding either for himself or the others whom he discusses. Instead, Dean takes the easy way out to make a buck. Too bad, real honesty could have done wonders for black men, black gay men and the black community in general.
 Finally! June 3, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I heard about this book from Publisher's Weekly last year and have been in a mild state of anticipation ever since.
I read this book in a day and a half and I must say that I enjoyed every second. I, like many others, was able to guess several of the names and have now gone back through it to figure out the rest. I am happy to see someone finally write about the 'down low' men and women in the entertainmaent industry because we know it exists. Am I surprised about any of the people 'mentioned' in the book? Absolutely not! But I live and let live.
Aside from the outings, Terrance gives the readers an in depth look into his life, from his drug-addicted mother, the sexual abuse he experienced at the hands of a family friend and above all else, his journey to self-acceptance. I was thoroughly moved by Terrance's candor and impressed with his ability to turn his aspirations into successes.
You, Me and He
Hiding In Plain Sight June 22, 2008
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Terrance Dean dances gingerly through glass as he journeys from self-loathing to self-loving in a memoir that is at once brutally forthcoming and surprisingly discreet.
He assigns aliases to the major and minor down low players in the entertainment industry, a world, as any insider knows, is about as gay as pink ink. And it's a good thing he does. Some are so thinly disguised that only the fear of self-outing is, perhaps, preventing legal action.
"Hiding In Hip-Hop" is crammed with enough superstars with cover wives, rappers rolling in the hay with their homies, and enough stellar celebrities and big buff athletes same-sexing it to line a mile of red carpet. Same-sex orgies in private Hollywood Hills abodes and pick-you-out-a-man sex parties in the penthouses of Eastside Manhattan are mere weekly rituals for these brothas (and a whole lot of sistahs) who belong to an exclusive fraternity where effeminate men, overly butch women and openly gay anybodies are strictly forbidden.
These hide-in-plain-site undercover homosexuals believe that they are having their cake and eating it too, but alas, the dark cloud of dishonesty, self-hatred, and the fear of discovery loom furtively above their heads.
And therein lies Mr. Dean's thesis. He judges no one but himself, and in his self-disciplining he does not spare the rod.
From the very beginning, his life, if it were not so tragic, seemed a cruel joke, a set-up for the kind of self-loathing that can prevent a man from loving himself as himself. Mr. Dean's early years factor greatly into his loathing of his sexual nature, just as surely as some others come to hate their dark skin, kinky hair, big noses, African roots.
The first part of the book is gripping melodrama; chronicling events no child should have to go through. Born into the slums of Detroit to a prostitute mother, he was four-years-old when he a gun was put to his head by his mother's rapist when he and his grandmother happened to walk in on the assault. An adult male neighbor later sexually assaults him. His mother contracts AIDS and dies of the then fatal disease while he's away at school(he was the first in his family to attend college). His baby brother, born with AIDS, dies shortly thereafter.
Arrested for car theft, Dean spends eight months in a Tennessee penitentiary. He remaines estranged from his family, except for his beloved Grandmother Pearl. Broke and downtrodden, he resorts to drinking.
Believing that his same-sex attraction is just another tarnish on his young life, he fights his desire for men with a passion.
In spite of all going on in his life Dean had been a good student, made admirable grades and, after college, determined that he was going to turn his life around. He ends up in Hollywood, alignes himself with a female friend who's a writer's assistant on the TV show "Friends." He finally lands a job as a production assistant on the set of a porn movie.
Being a hard worker who had made a Scarlet O'Hara vow to himself ("As God is my witness, I'll never go hungry again!"), Dean moves quickly through the ranks, each job better than the next, networking with the movers and shakers of the industry, where he then finds that most of the black men he encounter in the biz have the same sexual secret as he. Once it is realized that he can be trusted, he's invited into the inner sexual circle where getting it on with some of the most recognizable black male stars in the business was routine.
He soon discovers that the down low syndrome is even more pervasive in the hip-hop community, where homosexual hook-ups seem more the rule than the exception.
Eventually, the constant hiding in this secret society and constantly monitoring his conversations, careful not to use the wrong pronoun, begins to take its toll. He begin pulling away from the scene and meeting more openly gay men. This begins to have a positive effect on him. Dean writes:
"These men were not hung up on what others thought of them. They were proud black gay men who lived their lives without fear or shame...They refuse to be unheard."
The death of a down low friend, Kenny Greene, lead singer of the group Intro, who had broken his silence and admitted to being bisexual and having full-blown AIDS in a Sister 2 Sister magazine article, convinces Dean to come out.
As the founder of Men's Empowerment, Inc., an organization dedicated to self-empowering men of color and different sexual natures, Terrance Dean turns his lemon of a life into lemonade for so many, and his book "Hiding In Hip Hop" is not simply a naughty Hollywood tell-all. It is a life lesson. In these pages we all find another way to look at that man in the mirror and like what we see. Looker: A Novel
HIDING IN THE HIGH PLACE May 10, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
This is a good look at some of the stars young people choose to look up to through this man's life.
We choose who we want to be, whether we are the star or the fan.Ho-9
Also check out the TRANSGENDER HIT
GLITTER GUNS -N- BUTTER by DuReese Evers
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
