Writing White-Redux 2009

We wrote this as an article back in 2005 but it never found a home. So we first posted this here in September 2007 and again in November 2008. We had no idea how many comments it would generate. We obviously touched a nerve with many people felt. And now, with Virginia’s Open Letter to Oprah making the cyber-rounds, Bernice McFadden’s (Sugar, Nowhere is a Place, This Bitter Earth) stance on Seg-Book-Gation, (http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/trends/segbookgation_in_publishing_144019.asp) and the first anniversary of Carleen Brice's —Children of the Waters &Orange Mint & Honey) December is National Buy a Book by a Black Author and Give it to Somebody Not Black Month.( http://welcomewhitefolks.blogspot.com/) it is evident that things haven’t improved and so here we post it again.

If you haven’t seen this before, please read our take on readin’ writin’ and racism below and let us know what you think. Please feel free to share a link to this on your social networks!

Crossing Over—Mirror vs Window

When an African American writer or entertainer achieves success with a wider (read White) audience, a la Will Smith or Terry McMillan, they are said to have cross-over appeal. Why isn’t the reverse true? When Blacks watch CSI, Spiderman 3 or pick up the latest John Grisham, no one attributes that to cross-over. Is it assumed that everyone will find these diversions entertaining? That race doesn’t matter as long as it’s White? That Blacks, Mexicans, Chinese, Lakhota Sioux, Lebanese and whomever else the census separates out will “get” the storyline and generate the dollars requisite for success?

Even in the racially diverse “Grey’s Anatomy”, the central character, intern Meredith Grey, is a White woman, despite the fact series writer/producer Shonda Rhimes, is African American. Happenstance or economics? Quiet as it’s kept, in our first novel, Exposures, we “wrote White”, deciding it was the surest way to test our joint writing chops--and get published. It worked; the novel sold in two weeks. It took a lot longer to find a home for our first book with Black characters. At the time we didn’t fit the established categories (we weren’t Toni or Terry), so many editors didn’t believe we would find an audience. They were wrong.

Are these situations silent testimony to the more refined racism that lives with us everyday—the kind of de facto pecking order largely unrecognized by those who perpetuate it, and unchallenged by those of us who are aware, but just grateful to be in the game? Maybe it’s not so silent. The movie “Crash” asks questions about who we are, and what we think about all those other people. There was awkward, knowing laughter in the theater when our not so secret little prejudices were laid bare.

Not so long ago, a White reader (one of many who identify themselves that way) emailed to say how much she enjoyed one of our books, but wondered if she was welcome to read our work since she wasn’t Black. We were stunned by the question, but it spoke to the segregated reading habits which are more the norm than we would like to admit. Are we so tired of dealing with each other at work, in the supermarket, on the bus, that it’s a relief to open a book and find people with strange accents and hairdos banished from our fictional world? Or is it more insidious? Are books our mirrors, and we only look for reflections of ourselves?

Shouldn’t reading provide a window to the greater world? We read Anna Karenina without being Russian,The 100 Secret Senses without being Chinese, Catcher in the Rye without being teenaged prep school boys,Shelters of Stone without being Cro-Magnon—Anne Rice without being a vampire. We delight in Carl Hiassen without being Floridians, Sandra Cisneros with no experience of being Latinas from Chicago, understand the plight of a Nigerian girl as told by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, never having set foot in Lagos. Since childhood we have read thousands of books about people who didn’t look like us and found them enlightening, hilarious, heartbreaking, and know, without doubt, we are better people because of it.

Why then is it so surprising when works of fiction, save for “literary” efforts like those of Alice Walker and Edward P. Jones, which mostly recount our collective, tragic, post middle passage history, cross over? Are we to believe that as fully franchised, contemporary Americans living a variety of social, educational, and economic circumstances that our stories are so foreign as to be incomprehensible? That we share no universal human truths?

After the surprise success of Tryin’ to Sleep in the Bed You Made, which featured drawings of two brown-skinned women on the cover, our publisher made a conscious effort to cross over our next book. That cover was dominated by a house flanked by a lush tree. Our three main characters were rendered the size of carpenter ants, their color indistinguishable. So, to appeal to a wider audience we had to lose face? What must we sacrifice to be palatable to the culture at large?

Some bookstores even have separate African American areas. Is this to make us more comfortable in unfamiliar territory? Does this highlight our work, or let other people know they can skip this aisle? Granted, some argue that having a unique section celebrates the Black experience. But are they really separate but unequal niches, a publishing ghetto with very different real estate values?

Until Waiting to Exhale made publishers understand that Black people buy books, we were mostly left outside the gates. Clearly they did not learn in American history that we risked and often lost our lives to learn to read. The Exhale phenomenon is the reason many of us were given a chance. Walter Mosley reached a wider readership thanks to the endorsement of President Clinton. But is it really so hard to throw open our windows and get some fresh air? Browse a bookstore section you usually pass without Oprah to lead the way? Ask a librarian or a co-worker for a recommendation; that’s how many non-Black readers found our work. You might discover a good read on an unexpected shelf—maybe gain insight into someone else, or surprisingly, yourself.

Opening the Book-Repost from the Denver Post Commentary from our Friend Carleen Brice

Opening the book
When will black fiction finally find the crossover audience it deserves?
By Carleen Brice Special to The Denver Post


Quick, name 10 black authors. If you got stuck after Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Walter Mosley and Terry McMillan, you're not alone, especially if you are not black.

One reason for this is that publishers tend to market books written by black authors solely to black readers. The conventional wisdom in the industry is that if books first become popular with a black audience then they will cross over. A writer friend of mine was told this with her first book. Ten books later, she has yet to cross over, despite respectable sales and favorable reviews. Without that crossover success, she's having a hard time finding a publisher for her latest novel.

While a handful of writers like the ones mentioned above have successfully crossed over, still far too many good writers go unknown.

It's not that black readers aren't buying books. In fact, according to the research firm Target Market News, which tracks African-American consumer spending, black readers spend $326 million annually on books.
But as the situations of my writer friend and many others illustrate, it's extremely hard to have a viable career in publishing without support from a wider (meaning not only black) audience.

It's difficult for black authors, especially of literary fiction, to develop the buzz that sells books. White readers don't hear about our books discussed generally, and without media exposure and water-cooler talk they don't know which of our books they may like.

To help change that, during Black History Month I'm calling on all readers to go to your favorite bookstore or library and try a book by one African-American writer.

My hope is to raise awareness about the many talented writers many Americans have never heard of. I want to hear more book- club members, bloggers and reviewers discussing writers such as Tayari Jones, Mat Johnson, Martha Southgate, Steven Barnes, Kim McLarin, Michael Thomas, ZZ Packer and Bettye Griffin.

In November, I started a blog to help black authors reach a broader readership. While the URL is welcomewhitefolks.blogspot.com, the blog targets all readers. And people seem hungry for it. It has received thousands of hits, and people are e-mailing me and leaving me comments about how they're hearing about good books they otherwise would never hear about.

Perhaps more important, it's giving people an opportunity to realize that just because a book is written by a black person or features black characters, it doesn't mean it's only for black readers.

Recently, Donna Grant and Virginia DeBerry, authors of "What Doesn't Kill You," wrote on their blog about how white people sometimes question if it's OK to read their novels. "Not so long ago, a white reader (one of many who identify themselves that way) e-mailed to say how much she enjoyed one of our books but wondered if she was welcome to read our work since she wasn't black.

"We were stunned by the question, but it spoke to the segregated reading habits that are more the norm than we would like to admit on the subject."
This kind of segregation is especially maddening because it doesn't work both ways. Black people read books by whites, Latinos and Asians all the time. And nobody thinks anything about it.

But as Grant and DeBerry note, "When an African-American writer or entertainer achieves success with a wider (read: white) audience, a la Will Smith or Terry McMillan, they are said to have crossover appeal. Why isn't the reverse true? When blacks watch 'CSI,' 'Spider-Man 3' or pick up the latest John Grisham, no one attributes that to crossover."

Of course, one of the best-selling black authors right now happens to be our president. Black writers are hopeful that Barack Obama's election will help publishers "get a clue about our stories," as Lori Tharps, author of the memoir "Kinky Gazpacho," put it recently in an article on theroot.com. "Obama has proved, after all, that readers of all races and backgrounds can take to non-mainstream literary portraits of the American experience," she said.

I'm hoping that in the age of Obama, we'll be able to agree that there's not white fiction and black fiction; there's just fiction.

Carleen Brice is author of the novels "Orange Mint and Honey" and, coming in July, "Children of the Waters."

Calling all you Tryin' Lovers! We Need Your Help!!!

We had a great time last week in LA for Book Expo America. It was a chance to catch up with fellow authors and friends like Donna Hill, Terry McMillan, Victoria Christopher Murray (we’ll get to see each other again in Cincinnati this July where we’ll both be signing at the NAACP Convention), Kimberla Lawson Roby, Terrie Williams, Sandra Kitt, Gwynne Forster, ReShunda Tate Billingsley. . . We met author Carleen Brice, whose novel, Orange Mint and Honey was published in February—we read it last year in galleys. Niki Turner, Zane, Omar Tyree, TJ Butler, and many more were in attendance. Actors Diahann Carroll and Tim Reid also have books coming, as does Dionne Warwick.

Being on the left coast also gave us the opportunity to meet with our movie folks including the producers of Far From the Tree and the star of Tryin’ to Sleep in the Bed You Made, Regina King. . It’s amazing to us that there are two of our books, heading toward “Action!” We’re excited about screenwriter Desha Dauchan’s work on adapting Tryin’ (we got to meet her Mom, Shirley, too). And all of you Tryin’ lovers—we (and Regina) have a question for you. What are the FIVE moments from the book you HAVE to see in the movie?

You know we can’t bring every scene, word for word from the book—that would be a mini-series. But we also want to try to bring your favorite moments to the screen. So please let us know by Wednesday, June 11th. From your responses, we’ll select one randomly chosen reader (we’ll be fair!) to receive a galley of our newest new book, What Doesn’t Kill You, which will be out in January ’09.

AND be on the lookout – next time we’ll be asking for your input on Far From the Tree!!!