Why black literature is important

When I first published my first novel, The Ebony Tree, I will never forget how I later found out that my 23-year-old niece then ran around the house and screamed with laughter after reading the book. Now mind you, my niece had always been an avid reader of white romance novels since her teens, but reading my book was like landing on Mars for her. He reportedly asked his mother, “Mom, did Aunt Maxine make this up? Did you really ‘play white’?”

My sister-in-law told her, “We don’t just play with white, we dream about white. That’s all we saw in books or on TV were white characters. They seemed to have a lot of fun.”

Usually most blacks grew up in the 50s with pictures on the wall of white Jesus, white Santa, and even white angels. There was nothing in the media or in the books that reflected the beauty of blackness. It goes without saying that if there was any book next to the Bible in the home, it was not a black book. He sent a silent message that black was ugly and white was beautiful. This was as negative an experience as when reading was forbidden to slaves.

Fast forward almost half a century. I know from raising my children, who are now all adults, that having black books at home was, and still is, a good influence on their self-esteem and confidence. When a person is reflected in the literature he reads, he indirectly helps to build a better image of himself. Because in literature we find our role models, our archetypes from which we can learn life lessons. More specifically, in African American literature, the stories are relevant to the black experience in this country. These experiences range from people who come from different socioeconomic classes, from different urban to rural regions, to different professions. We often take Alger Horatio’s story from poverty to wealth in reverse, the story from wealth to poverty. Most of these stories are social commentary on how we all play a role in the American Dream Symphony.

“Black Writers on the Rise,” screamed the headlines. I believed them. After all, when looking at the different African American book genres in local predominantly black bookstores, who wouldn’t think that? Hadn’t things gotten better for us as black writers since the late ’80s? However, after attending the Book Expo of America (formerly the American Book Association) held in Los Angeles, California in late April 1999, I had a rude awakening. Seeing all the books in the predominantly black bookstores around Los Angeles, I had been numbed by a false sense of complacency that we, as African-American writers, were being published at the same rate as mainstream books. To say the least, he was disappointed.

Yes, the 1999 Book Show was a great revelation. The bad news is this: our troubles (as African American writers) are far from over. When I compared the books represented by the major publishers, I saw that the percentage of black books is infinitesimally small compared to that of other races. I’m not a fortune teller, but I think the number of African-American books can disappear as they did after the Harlem Renaissance, after the late 1940s, and after the revolutionary 1960s, if we don’t take control of our own written words.

However, the good news is this. The observed increase in the number of African-American books can be attributed, in general, not only to more black publishers, black publishers, but to self-published books. Given the advent of desktop publishing, the internet, and black book clubs, many writers are taking control of our destinies and making us stronger by publishing our own stories.

So consider these questions. In what other ways has having more black books helped? Is it easier to get published by the mainstream as a black writer, in a tight publishing market? Why is desktop publishing so important, especially for black writers, if you can’t get your books published in the mainstream? To encourage other writers to write their stories, here are some of the good things that black literature has brought to this country.

1. Salvation. To paraphrase Toni Cade Bambara, fiction snatches you off the edge as a black person in America.

2. Continuity with your ancestors. To paraphrase Toni Morrison, “if you are not writing about the Village where you come from, then you are not writing about anything.”

3. A reading public eager to see stories that reflect their reality.

4. A way to restore history that was not allowed to be written in the past.

5. A way to lift the next generation through the printed word, in addition to our oral tradition, which is reflected in rap, Hip Hop and Poetry.

6. A way to promote racial understanding of other ethnic groups. I learn a lot about other parts of the diaspora when I read books by Haitian Americans, or when I read Chinese-American literature or the literature of any other culture.

Recently, a teacher told me at a book signing that a study was done at her school. It was found that all black girls said that their beauty image was still a blue-eyed blonde girl. Conceived! It was December 1999! It reminds me of the tragic story from Toni Morrison’s book, Bluest Eyes, where the whipped black girl, Pecola, went crazy, all because she wanted blue eyes. The setting for this book was around 1940.

My point is this. If we keep writing our stories, we, as African American writers, may never have parity in the world of books. But at the same time, we won’t have another generation of black girls playing white, like my friends and I did, with scarves and towels over our hair, which we felt was not beautiful enough. Or maybe, we won’t let the girls go crazy like the fictional Pecola did.

Copyright 2006 Black Butterfly Press