The "Toni / Terry" Challenge

I spent the afternoon sharing the panel stage with Victoria Christopher Murray, Donna Hill, and Virginia DeBerry and Donna Grant, and fellow newbie author T. Holland (she just wrote Aw, Shucks) as part of the 2nd Annual "Ladies of Literature" panel hosted by Delta Sigma Theta, Lehman College, and The Bronx Council on the Arts.

Delta Sigma Theta solicited questions to stimulate the discussion and our moderator Dr. Veronie Lawrence Wright opened the Q&A with a question about the immense popularity of the "street lit"/"urban fiction" genre. Each of the panelists had a different and valid perspective, but the consensus was this: shelving books according to the color of authors' skin versus genre is misleading. i.e. Just because Toni Morrison and Terry McMillan are both black doesn't mean their books belong in the same section of the bookstore.

The question of whether there should be an African-American section in the bookstore is one I've been mulling over a lot as author Bernice McFadden wrote a provocative op-ed on the topic, and it has come up a few times in recent discussions and appearances. At the end of last year, on her syndicated show on Blogtalk Radio, Ella Curry threw the question out to me and my fellow authors/panelists including Tina McElroy Ansa. I think I said we needed an Afr-Am section as well as placement in the general genre sections because I remember what it meant to me to discover the likes of April Sinclair, Joan Morgan, Edwidge Danticat, Zadie Smith, and others -- and I believe I found them in the Afr-Am section. However, Victoria Christopher Murray, Donna Hill, Donna Grant, and Virginia DeBerry have been writing professionally for the past 20 years and noted their books were exposed to a much bigger audience before the advent of Afr-Am book sections.

It's a tricky topic, especially when you have books like Katherine Stockett's The Help (which I thoroughly enjoyed) and Chris Cleave's Little Bee which have black protagonists and appeal to black audiences, that are written by white authors. I don't remember seeing those books in the black book section, but then I haven't looked for them there, and in fact, I usually buy my books via Amazon which raises an entirely different issue...

As we spoke, it got me thinking about something Monster's Ball producer Lee Daniels once said. At a symposium at Sony (where I used to work), Daniels was in the house promoting The Woodsman, I think, and he noted that he had considered casting a black actor to play Kevin Bacon's part but his mother implored him not to cast a black man as a child molester. Daniels obviously acquiesced, but he bemoaned his lack of artistic freedom as a black producer/director to do just that. Today's panel spurred me on to take that freedom -- as my fellow panelists have done in their careers.

Donna Grant mentioned, in particular, facing the "Toni/Terry" challenge in which black authors whose voices didn't mimic Toni Morrison's or Terry McMillan's struggled to find support from publishers. But teens of books later, they have each carved out their niches writing books that have expanded the scope of contemporary fiction. I left a little lighter after selling a few books, feeling incredibly inspired and encouraged to carve out mine.

[photo courtesy of mije.org]