Dee Savoy

Today our Vibrant Voice belongs to L.A. Banks (or what she told her to call her the first time I met her–Leslie Esdaile) and other monikers. I honestly don’t remember the first time I met Leslie. I do remember sharing a hotel room at Slam Jam once and laughing out butts off 24/7. With Les, you are going to laugh and you are going to get your big hug. Here’s your fix of each for today as she talks about why she loves being an author:

I LOVE MY JOB! When you have a platform as awesome as being an author, you have a chance to “build you a world.” You can make African Americans proud, courageous, loving, sexy, intelligent, powerful, heroic, sheroic, supernatural, superhuman, superfly, responsible, young, gifted, and black. Yes, the color–black–giving them our full, African lips, and noses, and hair, kinky, glorious, and dread-locked, if you wanna. You set the beauty standard. You can make a dark, chocolate-hued man make a sister reading your passages wanna slap her Momma. You can make a brother shake his head and blot his forehead after reading about a thick hipped, exquisitely African-featured queen. Uh huh. You can have folks go tell it on the mountian, if you wanna. You can have church right between the pages, and serve justice in print, even though we often don’t get it in court. Yeah, you can even give the Devil his due, or send in superheroes to WWE Smackdown the forces of evil. Yeah, I love my job. Why?

Because sisters, brothers, you have the power to envision our past, present, and future. You can tell our history, chronicle our heartaches, sing our rhythms and blues, rejoice for our victories till our souls look back and wonder how we got over. THAT is great cosmic power. THAT is great responsibility. THAT takes great courage. Because, you see, all rhetoric, book advances, and drama aside, your novels will outlive you. Think about that. So if you just got in the writing game to “get paid,” that’s cool–but history will tell on you. Yes, indeedy it will. If you made a statement, took a position, whatever it is or was, history will tell on you. Generations will know what you were about from what you left behind, and the written word, much like the sacred papyrus, may be all they have to develop a perception–much like the Egyptians (Kemetians, to be politically correct.)

It’s always your decision, it’s always your creative freedom of choice what you do. But I for one love my job, because I love my people, I love our crazy ways, I love our soulful ways, I love our music, I love our myriad of colors and cultures, our styles of expressing our deep down spirituality, just like I love the way we cook, how we laugh, our hair, the way we just get down and love each other hard and real, the way we do in families, good, bad, and the ugly, I love our people–that’s why I love my job… you see, I’m just a scribe… I’m just a chronicler of the universe. I just report what I see, what I’ve experienced. But that’s an awesome responsibility and a lot of power. I thank The Creator that I got hand picked to be one of those. Got picked to be an author. It’s a privilege, because I didn’t have to get picked at all. I got passed over for singing, can’t sing a note without sounding like a frog… but The Creator gave me a voice on paper, and this sister loves to blow like it’s Sunday morning Gospel, you feeling me?

So, uh uh, I’m not gonna waste my time fussing about woulda, coulda, shoulda, or whatever is going on foul in the industry. I’m gonna close my eyes and listen to the images and voices in my head that want their story told, and then I’m gonna tell it to the best of my ability until somebody says, Amen… or Ashe… job well done, sis. That’s what I live for.

Much love… stay positive, stay strong… peace!
L.A. Banks

Please post a comment to let L.A. know how much you enjoyed her post. Visit her website and check out her blog.

Thursday: Author Kimberly Kaye Terry