From NPR comes this:
News & Notes with Ed Gordon, February 20, 2006:
Black authors are enjoying increasing book sales and greater attention. Farai Chideya hosts a roundtable on the past, present and future of black literature. Guests include author DeWitt Gilmore, who writes under the name Relentless; Malaika Adero, senior editor for Atria Books; and Nick Chiles, editor-in-chief of travel magazine Odyssey Couleur.
Go here to listen to the roundtable discussion. I have not yet, but since it's relevant to the discussion below and elsewhere on books by black authors, I wanted to put the link here.
I don’t read black authors. Not because they are black, but because their life experiences are so different than mine. It is this same reason that I do not read homosexual authors.
If you remember I was horrified at one time that I was picking up some Faulkerisms… 😉
So Cynthia, how do you know every book written by an author who happens to be black is a display of African-American life experience? At least the homo authors can write on any subject and not have to give away the fact their gay, blacks don’t have the luxury of covering up their skin color. I just think this is proof positive of why the previous discussion is so important. Cynthia is living proof that black authors lose many sales because they are not being treated according to the content of their work.
Anonymous…
I do read Marmon Silko… (she is a Hopi writer from Arizona) she has experiences that I relate to… ummm I have tried to read certain african-american authors and did not enjoy their books. Once again I could not relate to their experiences.
Once again… it was the content that I could not relate to… Also, I do not read authors who write for New York audiences.
Ack, you two, not homo! As my gay friend informed me, it’s gay, not homosexual. 🙂 This is a very PC blog. Ha! 🙂
Okay, hmm, I think Cyn that what anon is saying, and what the debate elsewhere has been about, is that there are some AA authors who write white characters (or non-black characters anyway) and who write straightforward mysteries or thrillers or romances or whatever. And they want to be marketed and shelved in the appropriate section, not in the AA section solely.
Suzanne Brockmann, one of my favorite authors, has this incredible ability to write characters that people love. So when she writes a mixed race woman as a heroine, no one blinks. They eat it up. And then there’s Harvard, her black Navy SEAL who is just to die for.
She wrote his book, though I haven’t read it yet (I have it though). Suzanne is white, btw, and that book was marketed in the general romance section. Heck, it was a category romance and it featured two black people on the cover. Not too typical, I’m thinking (and it originally came out in 1998). She recently wrote a secondary romance plot that featured gay characters. It was well done, though I admit to a tad bit of squeamishness during the kiss scenes.
Now, as for black experience, yeah I’ve thought that too. But then I took classes where I had to read books about black culture and life. And I LOVED them! But, as a white person, they can make you hurt too. They sometimes make you hurt for what white people have done (as you will agree that Silko does so well also). Sometimes they have nothing to do with white people, though, as you’ll remember from reading Hurston. (I’m mostly talking about literature here.)
As for pop fiction, I have to admit that I don’t think I’ve read any by AA authors that are marketed to an AA audience (though I’m going to change that). I have read Zane because my black critique partner loaned a book to me. Whoa, dudes, I nearly combusted. 😉
Mostly, I just want a good book. My CP is writing a women’s fiction tale with a mixed bag of characters. But I realized when reading her scenes that I only know the two main characters are black because she told me in the beginning. Their thoughts, feelings, hurts, wants, needs are just the same as anyone elses. I can identify with them.
But, each to his or her own. 🙂 If you don’t want to read about NY or Chicago or whatever, then that’s your choice. But I think you should branch out from time to time, just to test the waters. I’m often surprised by what I find. I don’t actively seek out gay/lesbian fiction, though I had to read Sandra Scoppetone once for a class and it was pretty darned good.
Well, geez, I’ve just gone on and on when what we really were talking about was the shelving and marketing. 🙂 Anon is saying that because the books get relegated to the AA section based on the author’s race and not on the content, then the author loses a potential audience because people who don’t want to read about the black experience won’t pick up the novel because they think that’s what it’s about. I don’t think anon minds that you don’t want to read about AA characters and life, just that the novels you might read and enjoy don’t get marketed to you.
Thank you both for commenting! I find this topic very interesting and I appreciate the variety of opinions. 🙂