You know sometimes I really do try to leave things unsaid. For instance, I refused to comment on the Al-Sharpton sounding artiste responsible for the Obama the Magic Negro recording played on Rush Limbaugh’s radio station. 
Thankfully one of my compatriots has taken care of that for me. (Yeah, I stole his picture, too) Enjoy!
It just goes with the territory when you are a published author that you are going to get a lot of mail from un- or newly published folks wanting your input on what they’re doing. I have to admit I’m remiss in answering this type of mail. Someone will send me an e-mail asking me something. By the time I find the information or formulate my response I can no longer find what I did with the e-mail–most often because I’ve neglected to save it. Anyway, I’m sure there are a few folks out there cursing my name for being unresponsive and I’ve often kicked myself too for just that infraction. But hey, I work every day, I’ve got three kids if you count the big one (don’t tell him I said that), I have my own writing, deal with it. Write me again and ask again. I rarely don’t answer because I have no intention of doing so.
That being said, I kept getting mail for some book called GHETTONATION. Y’all know how I feel about ghetto, so I was trying very hard to ignore this since I don’t have the time to check out every book promo sent to me. But thanks to the good folks on Tee C. Royal’s Rawsistaz yahoo group I was led to this article about the book written by Cora Daniels.
My appreciation for Ms. Daniels’ work starts with her definition of ghetto. As described in the article:
…ghetto isn’t a neighborhood. Ghetto doesn’t just affect a certain race or economic class (we like to think that have-nots are ghetto and the haves are ghetto-free). To Daniels, ghetto is a mentality to “aim low.” The ghetto persona devalues education, thinks in the short-term rather the long-term, lacks self-respect, and celebrates the worst (African American) stereotypes.
Sound familiar? That’s what I and other bloggers decrying the new wave of ghetto fiction have been saying from its inception. The article continues:
…Daniels discusses her own ghetto mentality. She explores how corporate America exploits ghettoness as a means to make money despite its disturbing ramifications. She calls out rappers who take on a ghetto persona despite the fact that they were raised in a privileged family. She talks to people who embrace ghetto because its the in thing to do and she chats with people who realize that a ghetto mentality is self-defeating. She talks about bad parents (young and old) who dabble in the art of ghetto.
This reminds me of a book signing I had at the beginning of my career in a very affluent suburb of New York. The young woman who approached my table said she wasn’t interested in my book. All she read was street lit. When I asked why that was, she replied that it was more real for her than romance. And here I was thinking this chick lives in a nicer area than I do, probably lives in a bigger house than I do, yet she identifies with the ghetto. There’s something out of whack with that.
Looks like I’m going to have to give this book a try, as soon as I get my TBR pile into some sort of manageable level. Oh, well.
Here’s an idea I’ve been meaning to post on for some time but couldn’t get my thoughts organized just so around it. The other day someone posted on one of the lists to which I belong a query about Wicca and other Goddess-worshiping religions. The poster was interested in finding any black participants since Goddess worship, as she understood it, was a European thing.
NOT, NOT, NOT!!! Goddess worship is the oldest form of piety on the planet. Earliest cave drawings depict female forms heavy with pregnancy (the Mother aspect of the Goddess) or with exaggerated breasts and genetalia (which some folks speculate may be the first erotica). However she was depicted, the Goddess was THE creative force in the universe. The Goddess was also depicted in such symbols as the sun, the moon, the serpent, the circle and other guises. Only later did men seem to get into the God business and eventually erase almost any reference to the female role in creation.
If Judaism was the death knell for Goddess worship, then Christianity was not only the nails in the coffin but the gallows by which it was hung, particularly during the Burning Times throughout Europe.
Makes me wonder how scared primitive (and not so primitive) man must have been of the opposite sex to warrant obliterating the female image from any sort of power position that they didn’t actually control (as in you are childbearers, so we must protect you and conversely you are our whores so we must protect ourselves from you.)
The truth is that the worst discrimination in the world is not black against white or any color against another, but the subjugation man has perpetrated and continues to perpetrate against women around the world.
End of sermon for today. Check back later for more cheerful commentary.
I have received the following e-mail from no less than six folks, so I guess I’m meant to spread the news:
Dear Friends:
You probably never thought of this, but women’s shelters in the U.S. go through thousands of tampons and pads monthly. Assistance agencies generally help with expenses of “everyday” necessities such as toilet paper, diapers, and clothing, but one of the most BASIC needs is overlooked – feminine hygiene products.
Seventh Generation, a green paper products and cleaning products company,has a do-good attitude and will donate a box of sanitary products to a women’s shelter in your chosen state – just for clicking the link.
Talk about easy (literally takes less than 1 minute and they ask nothing of you).
And, yes, it is Legitimate!
(http://www.tampontification.com/donate.php)
Thanks for helping out. Please pass this on.
“A woman has got to love a bad man once or twice in her life, to be thankful for a good one.”
I went to this site, don’t know if it’s legit or not, but the prospect of already abused women having to beg for sanitary products made me chance it. On another page, they ask folks to say a few words about their menstuation experiences. My response is in the title.
Can somebody please tell me why I should care if nude/sex poses of Antonella Barba are floating around the web? She’s currently the hot topic over at Technorati and many another site, as if posing provocatively to get attention were something new. Even the pictures (which may or may not be her) with the poplolly in her mouth (IMO it was too small to waste the d-word on it) are boring.
If there’s anything disturbing to me about these images it is that they are part of a growing trend of privacy invasion the like of which we haven’t seen before. Any yahoo with a videophone can post what they “film” on Yahoo or Youtube or wherever–without ever asking the subject of that video for permission. Everything, everything, everything is grist for the worldwide entertainment mill. Nothing is sacred anymore. Nothing is out of bounds. Sure it would be nice if we lived in a world where everybody wore underwear, but does anyone deserve humiliation when they don’t?
It’s funny, but didn’t Sharon Stone sue the makers of Basic Instinct for showing her hoo-hah without her permission–and win? But now any idjit with a cell phone can capture you doing just about anything. Then thanks to the internet, a momentarily embarrassing moment can become a worldwide spectacle.
This sort of cyber-outing needs desperately to be regulated. A professional photographer couldn’t post your picture anywhere without your permission–why should the kid down the corner be able to?
Most disturbing of all, is why do we as a nation find it do fascinating to peer so intimately into the lives of both celebrities and those we don’t know from Adam? Maybe we ought to get up from the computer, have some sort of life that provides its own excitement and leave each other alone.
I have learned a new reality today–I am not black, nor is Barack Obama–at least not according to author Debra Dickerson who maintains that being black means being a descendent of West Africans who came to this country as slaves. HUH??
Last time I checked, black folks were just that–black, brown, beige whatever, depending on where you’re from and how much (um) fraternization your folks did with others. To my knowledge, none of my folks were slaves in this country with the possible exception of some folks on my father’s side who, given the name Savoy, obviously came from Louisiana.
Obama, is however African American–Dickerson will give him that much, since his dad is from Kenya. I suppose by that logic Dickerson would allow me my own assessment of my cultural identity: Jamerican–Jamaican and American.
Here’s what Dickerson had to say on the Daily Show.
So now Obama and I, and millions more folks I’m sure are now un-black in Dickerson’s eyes. Is that like being undead? Maybe she means the rest of us brown-skinned non-black folks who don’t a have a slave background here in America are, like vampires, sucking up the benefits of racial progress without having suffered for them first. I hope not. Either way, I think I’ll go sharpen my eyeteeth anyway.
In case you haven’t guessed it yet, our topic for today is racism in publishing. This is not my favorite topic and it has been written on extensively by folks who wax more eloquently than I usually do. In fact, I’ve discovered I’m sick of it.
Recently I was asked to participate in a survey of black romance authors regarding this very topic. At first I thought, what the hell, it’s black history month and this stuff is bound to happen. Although the person asking the questions is unquestionably steeped in the mainstream of romance, being black herself, I thought she might add some fresh insight on the topic (a little reverse racism on the part of moi, no?)
Well, I took a look at the questions and knew I wouldn’t be answering any of them. I’d seen these questions before, blogged about them myself and read countless blogs, articles, manifestos and diatribes on the same topics. You want to know what I think about racism in publishing, read a few backposts then get back to me if you have any questions.
However, I don’t blame the sponsor of the survey (who will remain nameless. I don’t like to post things obliquely when I give my opinion, but I don’t want to call anyone else out either) for the lack of originality. When black authors discuss racism in publishing there’s only so much to say. Is there racism in publishing? Yes, tick the box. Have you felt the effects of said racism? Tick the box. Same questions, same answers. The rest is providing examples.
What struck me next was the negativity inherent in responding to the topic. Well racism isn’t supposed to be a happy topic, is it? Nevertheless, I’m tired of it, done. Why? I was thinking that it is Black History Month, a time that is supposed to be a celebration of all things black, a time to offer upliftment (if that is a word) rather than trot out downtroddenness (hey, I made up another word, according to my spell checker) and despair.
There is plenty of good to be said about being a black author writing about black (and other) characters in this time in this place. For all the pitfalls of publishing anything let alone black romance, I wouldn’t trade this profession for anything, including my other love, teaching.
And so, for the rest of Black History month, I will, along with my other posts, be featuring GOOD NEWS, positivity, and hope. You’ll have to look for your fix of negativity elsewhere.
As we begin Black History Month, I join my voice with a chorus of others calling for a moratorium on the use of the N-word in all it’s forms in speech and even thought. I won’t go into my reasons here, as others have spoken on it more eloquently than I have elsewhere. Still unconvinced? Visit this website and make sure to keep the sound on.
Thanks to all of you with the fortitude to come back to this topic. As promised yesterday, this part of the piece will talk about books. Without a doubt, the landscape for black publishing has changed greatly in the last two decades. Time was, the only folks who could hope to be published were the Toni’s, the James’s and the W.E.B.’s of the world. These days black authors have exploded into every genre, from romance to mystery to horror to whatever, while still maintaining a literary tradition. For that I say whoopee!
But an interesting phenomenon has happened along side all this progress known as the blacks only fiction section of the bookstore. In my local Barnes and Noble it is right there in the front of the store, but in my mind it occupies the same spot at the back of the bus blacks were once relegated to.
There are some black readers and authors who see this as a bonus. For readers it is one-stop shopping. For authors, it ups the opportunity that their core market will be able to find their book. But that’s only the surface effect.
Back to Ms. Hill for a moment:
If we as a people sit back and allow another group of people to dictate where we can sell, what we can write, who it can be marketed to and where it can be shelved, then everything that our ancestors fought and died for was a waste.
Where the problem of ghettoization has arisen is in the intentional mis-education of the Negro. We’ve been hoodwinked, tricked, bamboozled into believing that the segregation of Black books is a good thing. We’ve been conditioned to return to that place when all the good Negroes stayed in their place, were happy with the shack down the road from the big house and the left overs tossed our way.
Because we have adapted to a society that sees us as inferior it’s simply easier to take what they give us and keep it moving. After all, if we really wanted to make a stink, somebody back then made it possible for us to do just that.
To me, this is the crux of the issue: who is determining where my and other books are placed and more importantly WHY. When most authors sit down to write, they don’t formulate their stories thinking to exclude readers. We write on universal themes anyone can enjoy. I don’t write for blacks or women, but for anyone who enjoys a good book. To relegate our work to the blacks only section cuts into potential sales and to marginalize black books, black authors and readers of every stripe.
Imagine you went to the bookstore and saw above a stack of books “Greek Fiction.” If you are not Greek, would you go to that table? You might, once, out of curiosity. But when you discovered that ALL Greek books were lumped together, as if the only thing of importance about them was that a Greek person wrote them, you had difficulty determining what was Greek romance, from Greek mystery, from Greek horror to Greek whatever, would you come back? Isn’t it easier to stick with tried and true divisions of books by genre? If a Greek book was there and it caught your attention, wouldn’t you buy it?
What bookstores do when they segregate fiction by race is to say that the only people who will find any value in the books placed in this section are people of the same race. If this is true, why is it that when I sign books in stores, I sell to a variety of people–rich, poor, old, young, white, black and everything in between. If my books are so lacking in interest to those outside my race, why have I sold to white grannies who put back books written by white authors so that they could afford to buy my books instead. Why is it when I read my fan mail, lots of readers tell me they are white or Hispanic or Pakistani or whatever and they have started reading more black romance or romantic suspense after reading my books? And I’m just one author.
This is not to say that I am running off catering to non-black readers. If the only folks who want to buy my books are black, that’s fine by me. But the bookstore shouldn’t be making sure that no one beside blacks gets a chance to see them.
Once more to Ms. Hill:
That’s what we’ve done with our literature, we’ve drifted off, so damned pleased that not only can we write and get published, we can write any piece of crap we want and it goes up on a shelf for sale. And while we are lulled by the fog of a full belly we got tricked into believing that life on the plantation is a good thing. “All you negras just stay ovah there, out da way.”
I bolded part of this text, because I think it is an important aspect of the black publishing industry. If you read the first part of this topic, you know what I think of the present state of hip-hop culture. It’s worse than an opiate to the masses, it’s an outright detriment. But now we have hip-hop literature, as well. Stories of thugs, hos, and other demimonde characters for our entertainment pleasure. Stories like these have been told for generations, but not with the frequency and financial backing from publishers they now receive. It seems that now that the publishing industry has determined that, yes, black folks do read and what they really want is criminals, over the top drama, and smut. Publishers are gobbling up these books to the point that many mainstream authors find they can no longer get a contract. Personally, I’m appalled.
To some extent, you can’t blame publishers–if that’s what people go out and buy, then why shouldn’t they produce more of it? To some extent, you can’t blame authors who, wanting to have a career that will sustain them financially, give readers what it appears they want. To some extent, you can’t blame readers, who clamor for stories about people who they feel they know or with whom they identify.
But what are we saying about the black community when the book that sells the most copies is the one that shows us at our worst. I’ve been at book signings where customers have told me they don’t read romance because it’s not real. Duh! By definition genre fiction is fantasy of one sort of another. Romance is a fantasy about love; mystery a fantasy about justice; horror/sci fi a fantasy about human nature. You pick your poison. But what many of these people mean is that they have bought into another fantasy–that black life is all about the ghetto, the bling and the booty. No other reality need apply.
Now in many circles I would get a lot of flack for what I’ve just said. I’d be accused of hating, being jealous or bringing negativity to the race. Well, I do hate this stuff, so what? Completely my prerogative to do so.
Am I jealous of their sales? You betcha! I’d love for my work to be read by more folks, but it doesn’t color my opinion of someone else’s work. If that were the case, I’d be calling James Patterson all kinds of (insert your favorite swear word here).
One of the most frequent arguments I hear as to why I should appreciate the urban/street lit genre is “They’re making money, they’re getting theirs. You should leave them alone.” Lots of things make money that serve no useful purpose. Do I need to get my Pet Rock out of the closet? By that logic, I should get my son to give up his paper route and sell drugs on the corner, since then he could make some real loot. After all, isn’t it the money involved that makes any endeavor worthwhile?
Am I bringing negativity? I don’t think so. To speak your mind and say you believe something is wrong is not being negative, it’s trying to bring about change. And if that is wrong, God help us all!
But I don’t seek to ban urban/street lit. It is a viable genre and those who read it and write it have every right to enjoy it. But let’s realize what it is: the same hip-hop glorification of the things in our community people used to work to escape.
One last visit to Ms. Hill:
But the root and foundation of every society throughout history can be found through their literature. They tried to bury our stories for centuries and they would have succeeded had it not been for the voices that would not be silenced.
And they are trying again, by giving us just enough of the American pie to appease us, while slowly and systematically continuing to relegate our stories to the shack, down the road and away from the big house. So that when company comes they won’t notice. They’ll just trot out the chosen few negras to show them off.
But there are voices now that will not be silenced, that are speaking up for the cause,for the right to be treated equally–because we should be. The question then will become; if a culture is judged by its literature what will history have to say about ours?
Good question, Ms. Hill. Anybody got an answer?
* Long-assed post
Multi-published author Donna Hill writes on the topic of segregation of black books in bookstores and the integration of blacks in America. I have strong opinions on both topics, but let’s look at what Donna has to say first. The following sentiments were voiced to her by another author friend.
We have been so eager to have the “white American dream” that we have forgotten or worst, no longer care about “the Black Dream.” We are so eager to sit with them, eat with them, live next to them, shop with them that we have in effect left “us” behind.Gone are the local black owned mom and pop stores in our own communities, the banks and neighborhoods that showcased the richness of our culture. We’ve been so happy that we can shop in the same stores and ride on the front of the bus that we’ve forgotten what it took to get here.The foundation upon which our struggles were born have crumbled to make way for integration. Hmmm.
The generation of today was conceived into a life of privilege and rights built upon the backs of our ancestors–but they have no clue that’s the reason they can stand so tall. They believe they are “entitled” and struggle, unity and brotherhood are no more than antiquated euphemisms, which makes it easy to abandon our own businesses and neighborhoods to support others. Why? Because we can.
I can’t argue with anything I see here. I’m old enough to remember the black-owned candy store (which is now Arab-owned), the black-owned bookstore (the store in which I held my first book signing in the beginning of December 1999 was shut down by the end of the month due to a Barnes and Noble opening nearby) the black piano tuner and black plumber who came to our house to work. Where are these people now? About the only black-owned businesses that survive are the beauty parlors since no one else wants to deal with our hair (though they will sell us hair care products).
As for a life of privilege with our young people, I put a lot of the blame on what we call hip-hop culture. I am again old enough to remember hip-hop at its inception. Rap was a kid named Ralph from two doors down talking over a James Brown cut in my parent’s basement. In those days rap was about partying, having a good time and being happy. Breaking (NOT break dancing) became a means of gangs settling their differences rather than brawling.
But you know what happens to just about everything when it’s taken over by mainstream media–it morphs into something else. In order for it to be exploited it’s got to be either cleaned up or dirtied down. In the case of hip-hop you get all these gangstas and faux gangstas talking about hos, homeys and other denizens of ‘hood life. That would be fine if this lifestyle didn’t outstrip any other vision of the black community.
To my mind, the hip-hop world view is the MOST detrimental influence in the black community, with its emphasis on getting your bling and your freak on at the expense of getting your education or your wedding band on before you create more kids than you can support. If our kids are behaving badly we’ve let their role models into our homes and schools and consciousness and we have only ourselves to blame. I’m all for supporting black-owned businesses, authors, entertainers, but for God’s sake, can we pick something worthy?
I can only wonder if these people are ever going to wake up and realize that what they are producing is the minstrel show for the new millennia sans the need for black face. When are these women going to stop shaking their boo-tays long enough to realize they are being exploited twice–first by the mainstream companies that clamor for this stuff and then by their supposed “brothers” who call them hos, bitches and other words too vile to reproduce here–to their face. To my mind, it’s sorry shame.
How do we get out of this mess? It’s time for black folks to reclaim their legacy of dignity and honor bestowed on them by those that came before. Self-determination is not a dirty word. I am not in favor of re-segregation in terms of physical location, but in terms of collectively stepping back and taking a look at what we’ve become. Is our current state the legacy we wish to leave for posterity? If not, wise voices need to speak up loudly and clearly and shout down the other voices that lead us in the wrong direction.
What has any of this got to do with books? Tune in tomorrow to find out!
