HYBRID AMBASSADORS: a blog-ring project of Dialogue2010 This spring you listened in or read about our multinational cultural roundtable discussion on hybrid life at expat+HAREM. Now we're back with interconnected blog posts, a shared reaction to a recent polarizing book promotion at the writing network SheWrites. Join the discussion on Twitter using #HybridAmbassadors or #Dialogue2010Introduction for White Readers to Black Authors
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| Borders Books Seattle |
To buy these books Online, all you have to do is click on a link, it'll get you to the requested title. If you go to a real bookstore however, one you enter through the front door, you may not find novels by Afro- or African American authors in the regular fiction department. You'll discover there's an African American Interest section where all Af Am writers are grouped together. At least, that's the case at the chain bookstores such as Borders and its subsidiary Waldenbooks.
The Indie bookstores I frequent in Seattle don't show segregated shelves for work by novelists of color. Nor is this the case at the Tattered Cover where Brice filmed her fictional video. (If you watch her video now, you'll see a disclaimer). Good booksellers will assist customers in finding what they are looking for, the best are able to direct book lovers in new directions.
Welcome White Folks
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| Elliott Bay Book Company |
Wanted White Ambassadors to Help Black Author Cross Over
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| Between Friends - Sandy Bell-Lundy |
One of the aims of the founders of SheWrites is to offer members a possibility to promote their upcoming titles by keeping the membership abreast of developments leading to the publication date.
After the above mentioned TalkRadio program had aired SheWrites member Lori L. Tharps, author of the memoir Kinky Gazpacho published her "Countdown to Publication" blog post.
Perhaps she was inspired by Carleen Brice's video . Perhaps Tharps thought humor would win over people unfamiliar with her work. Tharps's Kinky Gazpacho does look like a fun read, but a comedy writer she is not. There was nothing remotely funny about the way she addressed her white Shewrites sisters. Perhaps she was the victim of a self fulfilling prophecy.
The discussion that followed in the comments section reeled participants in and out of a time warp, with white readers promising to promote her book, sight unseen and a few wondering what the hell was going on.
Why the segregation in addressing fellow writers?
The Times are Literary A Changin'
The fact is, the TalkRadio program and the discussion following the blogpost by Lori Tharps tell us that the times they are a changin', but if we don't pay close attention, all we may wind up with is a reversal. |
| By Judy L Katz 1st publ. 1978 |
"... I felt defensive about my whiteness and guilty and hurt because I was labeled the oppressor. [The group's response:] This was a self-indulgent way to use up my energy. The real issue was not whether I was concerned about addressing racism but what I had done to challenge it. What action had I taken? By not acting I supported and perpetuated racism." From White Awareness: Handbook for Anti-Racism Training
SheWrites is a platform where writers can count on support as writers. A place to promote our own work and if we like an other writer's work, we'll promote her book, but our willingness to promote a writer is based on our liking someone's work, not on an imposed sense of discomfort.
Celebrate Contemporary Authors of Color
At this time in history the focus of African American writing is changing and all of us can have a hand in making that known to people in our community, no matter what color we have.
"Today, African American literature has become accepted as an integral part of American literature, with books such as Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, and Beloved by Toni Morrison achieving both best-selling and award-winning status."
Seeing this last paragraph of the Wikipedia page on Af Am Lit makes me smile. The mentioned "Today" was the today of yesteryear and is way behind the times. Take alone the books on Hurricane Katrina and engaging novels by women authors mentioned above, look at work by Jeffery Renard Allen and while you're at it check out other "young" writers of color such as Sonya Chung or Rattawut Lapcharoensap.
Have you read a great novel by a writer of color lately? Visit Wikipedia and help contemporary writers make history.
More thoughts on this subject from my fellow HYBRID AMBASSADORS:
Sezin Koehler's Whites Only?
Rose Deniz's Voice Lessons from a Hybrid Ambassador
Catherine Yiğit's Special-ism
Anastasia Ashman's Great White People Book Club
Tara Lutman Agacayak's Circles
Catherine Bayar's Thicker Skin
Elmira Bayraslı's The Color of Writing
Jocelyn Eikenburg's The Problem with "Chinese Food"
This work by Judith van Praag is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License
23 comments:
And, take a look at my response to your nonsupportive, fellow woman writer-bashing cluster f at Loquaciously Yours. j
What a comprehensive post, Judith! I don't know where to start, but I must say that since the White Ambassadors post I have been thinking a great deal about segregated bookshelves. Here in my home I have hundreds of books and yes they are segregated: My favourite books, the crap books (which are on lower shelves so I don't have to be reminded of their presence), to-read books, coffee table (i.e. photo books), and my husband's books. Nowhere does race play a part, and it makes me sad that bookshops in the USA tend towards segregation. In Europe even books about minorities issues are filed under general history or cultural studies. You'll never see a Romani section, for example, but you will find those titles in books on Czech history, language, politics, etc.
I remember when She Writes announced the forum to introduce white readers to black authors. I did not participate in that because I found it quite alienating. As a biracial white/Asian hybrid, where do I fit into that 1950s-esque black & white dichotomy? I don't. I hope that with these posts we can at least start some awareness-building of different ways we as women can bridge gulfs around race and readership.
Thank you, Judith!
This post made me think of a trip to the Tattered Cover bookstore in Denver. I suddenly felt that I must have missed something, I don't remember an Af-Am Lit shelf, is it that it didn't exist or I just ignored it? I can't remember the decade since has dimmed my memory. Thanks for such a thoughtful post. Change can only start with ourselves.
Wow, Judith - so much information here, and it becomes clear, upon reading it, how much of a farce some agenda scan be compared to genuine expressions of interest. If people feel bad when joining in, it won't have nearly the impact it could have had.
Thank you for supporting me on my post. I love your perspective and the wealth of knowledge you bring to this discussion.
@Sezin, In my response to Kamy Wicoff's report on the TalkRadio panel program I wrote about my segregated shelves. How decades ago, when I started delving into women's lit I separated books by gender. Until I realized that if I didn't want to be a woman artist, I shouldn't separate a woman writer from her male peers. Thus my shelves are organized much like yours. With the exception of crap, that doesn't get to be on a shelf, if crap winds up in my hands, I usually "leave it somewhere" by accident. We've got shelves of "to read" in the living room, piles of "to read" on the bed stands. My husband has his shelves in his music room, my books on writing and other non-fiction titles can be found in cases near my writing den, books I work with are in the den and the rest is on shelves in the library/studio.
Nota Bene: I don't think there's a tendency in the U.S. to segregate books by race, this is only the case at certain chain book stores such as Borders! The independent book stores may have an ethnic studies section, but authors of color who write Fiction can be found among the works of their peers.
I'm tempted to say that people who encounter the Af-Am shelves are —per definition— shopping at the wrong stores. Indie book stores is where it's at!
@Yazar,
Inspired by your comment about Tattered Cover, I called that bookstore to find out how they organize writers of color.
All titles by fiction writers, no matter their ethnic backgrounds, are mixed in together under General Fiction.
Non-Fiction by Af-Am writers can be found in a sub-section of the History section. Very much the way it is at indie bookstores here in Seattle.
Where was Carleen Brice's video shot?
Judith! Such a wealth of info here I keep following links and not making it back to comment. Still trying to find a way to view the video -- must be hosted on a site blocked in Turkey.
To address the issue of needing to be introduced to black writers, or needing to be spoken to in a certain way in order to be receptive to reading black writing, I simply do not identify with that. I may not yet know a writer or her titles, but that is true of many writers and titles out there. I do agree the publishing and bookselling industries have played a huge role in segregating writer and their titles from potential readership.
I took a look around my own house. My own bookshelves have been organized by topic (a whole one devoted to Turkish history, for example, they're mostly my husband's books), and one for graphic novels. I also have a shelf by my desk of "inspiration" books and tomes on the topics I am working with. Those rotate over time -- today they’re about trauma and dissociation, female friendship, brain science and life writing.
My bookshelves are also decorative, so things are shelved not always by topic but which books look good together. Size, binding.
Oh, and recently I tried shelving according to color.
THE COLOR OF THE COVER. An interior decorating idea. It looks ok, all the shades of blue together. The big rust red coffee table books laid horizontally. But my problem with this is I don't always recall a book by its cover (a variation of not judging a book by its cover?) so when or if I need a particular one, I'd have to look at them all.
Both on these shelves and in my memory (I’ve had 30 homes and lost a lot of books along the way), I review who I’ve been reading.
I've been reading writers of color since I could read. Interchangeably with classics by 'dead white guys'. I was lucky to have access to a lot of books -- especially growing up in Berkeley which at that time had the highest number of bookstores per capita in the entire nation. I kept a book list (hopefully still lost in my parents’ basement to be found one day) of what I’d read, and reached 1,000 before I went to college.
end of part 1
begin part 2 (got an error message the comment was too large, oh brother!)
Reading was a way to explore the wider world, but also a way to comprehend my own.
Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye made a big impression on me at the age of 9, and as the ‘unpretty’ sibling of a blonde blue-eyed sister, I recall identifying with the self-loathing of the protagonist. Was never going to see the world through those blue eyes.
Going through puberty, a novel by a Haitian writer (wish I could remember the author’s name!) described the underarm of a woman as “peppery”, and that made sense to me in a way nothing the dead white guys were writing about -- suddenly my own peppery smell wasn’t something to be afraid of.
I don’t read many novels any more (went nonfiction almost 10 years ago) but am currently reading Zadie Smith’s WHITE TEETH in beach-sized increments. I also have an enduring fondness for South Asian writers (and certain fatalistic Japanese writers).
Cannot say I search out books by writers based on their color. My book buying is serendipitous, things that catch my eye, things I’ve heard about, things I want to know more about, writers I’ve met, writers I’ve read excerpted. Definitely the segregation in the industry affects who I might run across in the mainstream media. As Rose and Tara have pointed out elsewhere, that playing field has been leveled a lot more by new media/social media.
Then, there’s also this --> Buying and reading is not a one-to-one correspondence for me and I wonder if it for anyone else. It’s not that simple. I don’t read everything I buy, and I buy even when I promise myself I won’t. I am in the process of giving away my physical books. More than a year of donating and I am still overloaded. I want to move on to digital only, and find the extra hours in the day to read it all. I also have to go for audio books so reading can be an activity that allows me to move my body -- I know that is key for my future health.
Apparently we could talk about this forever. Thanks for the meaty post and for the inspiration to talk about all of the above.
Jamaica Kincaid. Alice Walker. Jhumpa Lahiri. bell hooks. Zora Neale Hurston. Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Gloria Anzaldua. Julia Alvarez (poems in Spanish). Cherrie Moraga. Sandra Cisneros. Edwidge Danticat. Louise Erdrich. Gish Jen. Audre Lorde. Toni Morrison. Arundhati Roy. Amitav Ghosh.
Aside from reading (Amitav Ghosh, the one male author in the list) The Glass Palace last year, these are all authors I read at at age 21 or younger. Maybe there was an outpouring of amazing books right before the millennium?
Add in everything since, Turkish authors, grad school books, artist monographs (Kiki Smith, Shahzia Sikander, Julie Mehretu, and more), and my reading tends to be about linking topics and styles that I like, kind of like the old choose-your-own-adventure books where one book leads to another.
If you look at my bookshelves now, you won't know the extent of my reading because like Anastasia said, moving means books get lost. And these days, I am less paper, more digital.
I learned to become myself through these books, and now having read a wide spectrum, find myself going back to young adult books because of how they shaped me and offered alternatives to my upbringing. At 21, the books above were what I and my (white and non-white) friends were reading. We read to discuss and to learn and grow. Because women writers of color, in particular, taught us about what could be, not what had been done.
Judith, this is a remarkable post that I've been coming back to for several days now, for your words and links, as well as the comprehensive comments here.
When I moved to Turkey nearly 12 year ago, I left behind at least 30 boxes of books, still in storage in CA. Everything from leather bound volumes written by those 'dead white guys' my schoolmaster grandfather taught, to large format art books gathered from museums around the world.
The 600+ books that came with me and now reside on shelves in our Selcuk home date from my all eras of my life, and were those books I could not be without - fiction, non-fiction, art, architecture, textiles, history - whatever captured my very diverse soul. Not being able to look at them since I'm in Istanbul, I'd say they are somewhat organized by country or region of the world, since I'd buy literature from writers of the places I was about to travel to, or cultures that spoke to me when I was a visitor.
So, arranging by geography or subject, sure, by culture or language, maybe, but by gender or race, no. And I am guilty of leaving books with the best jacket designs out on tables - why hide them away when it makes me happy to see them?
Judith your post has highlighted two themes for me. The first is the power of classification and the second is the power of the web.
Classifications are malleable, not set in stone. I maintain that information is useless unless organized, and there is more than one way to organize information.
There is lots of talk about how the web has the ability to democratize. Especially compelling to me is the idea of pull vs. push. That through the web people can get information the way they want it.
Both of these concepts have the potential to change the game for all writers as long as we don't hold ourselves to the old way of doing things.
Judith, was finally able to watch Carleen Brice's video here (YouTube is blocked in Turkey, but there are ways!). Does anyone else see the humor in it, beyond the Masterpiece Theatre setup? I found it awkward, painful and condescending. Okay, so I get her point, but did she really have to have that white suburban mom rapping (or whatever the hell that embarrassment was)?. That's how we whites have been coming across all these years? Really? ALL of us? What year is this again?
Judith, was finally able to watch Carleen Brice's video here (YouTube is blocked in Turkey, but there are ways!). Does anyone else see the humor in it, beyond the Masterpiece Theatre setup? I found it awkward, painful and condescending. Okay, so I get her point, but did she really have to have that white suburban mom rapping (or whatever the hell that embarrassment was)?. That's how we whites have been coming across all these years? Really? ALL of us? What year is this again?
@Rose, A farce can be helpful if the intention is read correctly. Of people watching Saturday Night Live you expect they get the sarcasm or irony.
The problem with democratic media platforms such as YouTube is that a less discriminative (no pun intended) audience may see what's produces as a farce with perhaps good intentions as The Truth.
While many are looking for signs of intelligence in our universe, I'm afraid ignorance reigns.
@Anastasia, Wow, what word flow! "Peppery underarm" in Hawaian Lit? I should have read that book as a teen and adolescent. But I had the Surinamese author Astrid Roemer who in her book De Gekte van een Vrouw (The Madness of a Woman) speaks of sexuality and menstruation. Never before had I come across such openness about a woman's body and experience. Not in the obligatory High School reading list of English, French, German nor my native Dutch lit.
As a stage designer in the multicultural theater world of the Netherlands I've read more plays and non-fiction books for research than novels.
When I'm working on a book I tend not to read fiction, just because it keeps me from focusing on my own work, and I like to read mostly non-fiction related to my project. But there are times that I read more than I write, and at those times I read fiction that relates to my project's subject.
The past six years I've written book reviews for the International Examiner a Seattle paper with a focus on people in the Asian American and immigrant community. Ironically European immigrants are not included and thus my voice will only be heard as arts writer and reviewer in the paper I work for.
The discussion about the visibility of African American literature in the book stores has shown me that I indeed was not aware of all the new authors whose work is being published.
You're right we can talk about this for a long time, but what I have to do now is get back to my manuscript or my book will never hit the shelves.
@BazaarBayar, Catherine, I've bought at least one book for its cover, and I think you would like it for the same reason I do.
It's The Art of Mending by Elizabeth Berk and I truly bought it (for $2 at a used book store) because the cover art shows folded fabrics behind a glass paned cabinet door. I've got a wall of shelves filled with folded fabrics like that in my studio. Would that be a book you'd leave out my designer friend?
@Tara, The Web has power to democratize but also hands users a tool to misinform and indoctrinate with lies.
You're in the positive and so what you create Online will have a positive effect but only on those who wish to feel and consider the ripples of your intentions.
@BazaarBayar, When you watched the video did it already have the disclaimer noting that Tattered Cover DOES NOT have an Af-Am lit section and that they don't endorse the video?
In the SW panel discussion Brice told Wicoff that she was disappointed/ disheartened by Indie bookstores stand, perhaps there's some history with Tattered Cover that made her want to have that store come off as a Borders affiliate.
Pitiful that a message that needs to be heard: there are more new Af-Am authors under the sun than the recognized older ones, loses values because of the fictional approach. Worse is when you read the comments there apparently are people who believe what's shown in the video. Oi vey!
Judith, I'd buy that book for its cover as well, since it looks like home to me too. So wishing I had an old armoire in our current shop instead of utilitarian shelves...
No, there was no disclaimer on the video I watched. I started to read the comments, but the Twilight Zone feeling got overwhelming and I clicked away, back to my saner world. Oi vey pretty much sums it up. And thanks, I've been spelling that wrong for years!
I was finally able to watch the Carleen Brice video.
A telling moment: the black author Brice can parody Masterpiece Theatre's Alastair Cook -- since apparently white viewers need an old British guy to get our attention -- but when the white soccer mom reader arrives in the African American literature section of the store and attempts to imitate Black street slang Brice twice tells her in a serious tone, "Don't do that."
Both impressions are badly done. Fine, these people are not accomplished actors, nor comedic writers. But why is one okay in this parody environment, and the other is not?
@Anastasia,
Alistair Cook, of course, now part of my confusion is explained. As a Masterpiece Theatre fan I could not figure out why the series' theme music was chosen for what I thought to be a parody of Nancy Pearl our famous Book Lust author and presenter of radio and TV programs known by the same name.
As for why parodying a white presenter (male or female), Brice herself does a great job spotlighting Af-Am authors on her website and she could aim at being the Af-Am Nancy Pearl, no need to parody.
Playing the devil's advocate all I can say is that the white woman's "Yo" performance, gives Brice the opportunity to point out white people don't need to "act" —what-they-think-is-black-behavior— to visit an Af-Am section in a bookstore.
To me, the assumption that white people would think they'd have to do that is ludicrous, the woman's performance is nauseating to me.
Btw can't stress enough that while the video was shot at Tattered Cover, the store doesn't have an Af-Am fiction section and doesn't endorse the video or its message.
Thanks for validating my memory Judith. Tattered Cover is a great store to get lost in and I'm so glad it's kept it's independence. Shame to see it being abused in that way...
@Anastasia, nothing in that video was okay, especially disparaging - no, lying - about a reputable indie bookstore's practices. Still incomprehensible why either Carleen Brice or Lori Tharp would chose to so alienate the very audience they seek to befriend. Others can claim they were joking all they want, but I don't buy it. But guess they're not interested in talking about their motives directly and honestly with any of us. Sad when we have to talk at, and not to, each other.
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