I had a rude awakening recently.
In an attempt to do some research for a book idea I had, my good friend in Indiana suggested a collection of shorts by Agatha Christie that I’ve never heard of. In retrospect, I should’ve gone online to buy it, but I wanted to re-live my teen years when I used to go to B. Dalton as soon as I got a little money in my pocket and run the aisles like a lunatic.
I found my book within the first five minutes of entry, so I decided to wander around with the hopes I could be tempted to buy another. Peeking around corners and looking at overhead signs I stumbled upon the “African American Literature” section of the store. I was a bit confused at first…I could see Toni Morrison‘s Beloved but the books surrounding it had such titles as More Drama in the Church and Nasty by the noted author Dr. XyZ (I’m not making that name up, that was the pseudonym the book was published under). My eyes darted up and down and I couldn’t easily spot a James Baldwin or a Richard Wright…hell, I couldn’t even see a Malcolm X anywhere. Just endless titles with covers of black women posed with attitude in skimpy attire or black men tatted up looking thuggish, strategically placed next to Beloved and I became incensed.
Let me just say that when I visited this bookstore months prior, this kind of literature had its own section titled “Urban Literature” and I didn’t have a problem with that. It is what it is, ya know? But to dwarf such books by Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes with titles like T.H.U.G. L.I.F.E.? (which, a fellow alumna recently pointed out to me, came from rapper Tupac Shakur; an acronym for “The Hate U Give Little Infants F***s Everyone“) Oh no…I can’t hang with that. Yes, sounds like my problem is with the bookstore, but it goes much deeper than that.
I’m about to get borderline offensive regarding this “urban literature” so hold on to your hat.
There are many who rally against this kind of literature, yet there are some that find value in it and mention such pioneer authors like Chester Himes of the “Gravedigger Jones” series who wrote and sold shorts about life on the streets from his jail cell. It has been argued that society needs a clear picture of the other side of the fence, the rotten side that’s filled with the have-nots and these types of books fit the bill. Let me ask you a question: is it a secret that ghettos are filled with Black people ho’in’, and sellin’, sniffin’ and riffin’ (to quote my man Chuch D. from Public Enemy)? I believe rap music has come through in informing the public on that issue ad nauseum. What exactly are these books revealing that people don’t already know? Why are black women in bootie-huggin’ dresses posed seductively on the cover? Will readers get some special insight on how to flip a gram into a kilo? Sorry, The Biography Channel has a series called “American Gangster” and if I want to find out how to run a drug empire, I’ll watch that show.
People, these titles aren’t published as non-fiction. They’re published as f-i-c-t-i-o-n. And what is fiction? Fiction is a huge lie masquerading as a truth. I teach my students in my fiction writing class to tell a lie and tell it good, to convince their readers that the story could and may happen by strategically using truthful elements to entertain and yes, fool the reader into thinking the characters, the setting, the situation…all of it exists. I tell my students that if the setting is in New York and they’ve never been there, they better do their research because if a native New Yorker picks up their story and you’ve missed the boat on certain details, the reader will soon lose interest…in a sense you will lose the reader’s TRUST. The reader is trusting you, the author, to know what the hell you’re writing about. Food for thought: are these actual tales from the ‘hood or is it someone who really does some damn good research with a vivid imagination? With an author by the name of Dr. XyZ, what do you think? For all you know, these books could be written by some white chick living in an expensive brownstone in Brooklyn Heights who couldn’t get a book deal any other way and is going undercover in the ‘hood for material and grammatically-correct Ebonics. (I warned you I was going to get borderline offensive, didn’t I?)
Here’s the kicker. Who are these writers writing for? What audience are they aiming at? Do you think Mr. Happy Madison (I’m a huge Adam Sandler fan) of Greenwich, CT and Park Avenue South is sending his assistant down to the local bookstore to get the latest from Sapphire? He might now, since the novel Push was turned into “Precious,” the hottest film of the season, but do you think he even knew who Sapphire was before then? Go to the bookstore, look at the covers. You seriously think Mr. Madison would buy it? I think not! These books are geared to the minority using the same themes that have been explored since the beginning of post-modernism but using hip language and sexy book covers. There are great contemporary authors like Z. Z. Packer and Zadie Smith, darlings of the literary world, whose writings don’t have a prerequisite that you must be a saddity, bougie black folk to enjoy a story.
The publishing industry needs to raise the bar on quality. We as disenfranchised citizens of this country need to raise our reading standards. I’m not saying all black people are reading these books but there wouldn’t be a market for them unless the demand was there, a demand the publishing industry has seized upon to make buckets of money. Do we really want to give publishers that much power?
