Writing While Black

Introduction

Welcome back.

Most of us have heard of famous Black writers such as James Baldwin, W. E. B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison and Langston Hughes. However, few outside the Black community realize the barriers imposed on them because of their race.

White literary reviewers criticized Hurston’s work for including “stereotypical” Black characters. Moreover, some Black intellectuals of the era criticized her for using the dialect of rural Black people and including characters who were “inappropriate” and “backwards”.

Likewise, James Baldwin found the racism of white people and the homophobia of the Black community and larger society so stifling to his work that he moved to France.

And W. E. B Du Bois is simultaneously revered and reviled for his writings on race in America, particularly for his promotion of and popularizing of the talented tenth, the concept that only the top ten percent of Black people should be allowed access to higher learning and leadership positions in the Black community.

Hughes, Angelou, and Morrison also had to contend with criticism of their work through the lens of whiteness, while simultaneous being critiqued by Black intellectuals for “holding them back” by focusing on topics like slavery and racism, and for discussing the problems of the Black community publicly.  

But Black writers and content creators have always had to walk the edge of keeping it real while making a living, which often means we must choose between wanting to be authentic and wanting to make money.

If you’ve followed book twitter at all in recent years, then you know how publishing devalues Black writers and their work. Hashtag PublishingPaidMe was started by black speculative fiction writer L.L. McKinney (full disclosure: I follower her on twitter) to highlight how the publishing industry has a history of paying Black writers lower advances than their white peers.

There have also been ongoing discussions among Black writers about how agents, editors, and publishing companies have wanted us to whitewash our stories, so they appeal to a larger (read: whiter) audience. This doesn’t make sense as the majority of writers and books published are by and feature white people, as evidence by this 2019 study by lee &Low  and this 2020 study by The New York Times. So, there’s a hunger for book by and about Black people

In response, Dhonielle Clayton ( whom I also follow on twitter) and others started the We NeedDiverseBooks hashtag and the organization of the same name.

But even with efforts like this, Black writers have a hard time not only being published but taken seriously due to the unfair expectations placed on them and the preconceptions about them and their work they must deal with, which I’ll discuss next.

Preconceptions

The greatest preconception Black writers must contend with is they aren’t as good as white writers because they aren’t as educated or skilled, and only got a seat at the table for diversity points.

Nnedi Okorafor, the Nigerian-American speculative fiction writer who also holds a PhD in English, was the subject of a backlash when she was nominated for the 2016 Hugo Award. Members of a voting bloc called the Sad Puppies, made up of mostly white males, tried to game the nominations so their favorite white male authors got all the slots.

Their campaign was ultimately unsuccessful, but this points to a larger problem: namely that Black writers and their stories are devalued. Often, we must be ten times better just to be seen on par with mediocre white writers and our work is often held to different standards.

For example if a white writer makes a mistake about depicting trans or immigrant characters, they’re given infinity chance to “grow and learn from their mistakes.” However, when Black writers make such mistakes, they are the subjects of internet harassment mobs who seek to get them fired, or threaten their lives for not using the right pronouns or getting a minor detail wrong.

  And if a book by a Black writer succeeds, it’s often because it’s written to the white gaze. We are often forced to mine our trauma as fodder for these white readers, thus that’s all that gets published and all we can write.

But Black people are more than racism, slavery, gang violence, and being poor. Our stories rang from the tragic to the heroic and everything in between. Yet, we aren’t allowed to explore this wide spectrum of experiences because only white narratives are deemed universal, and publishers can’t risk offending their base.

Yet when we point out how fucked up this is, how it’s a part of institutional racism and upholds systems of white supremacy, we pigeonholed as the angry Black man/woman and get the label: difficult to work with.

Black writers don’t have to contend with just the above. As I’ll lay out next, we also have to deal with unrealistic and unfair expectations.

Expectations

As black writers, we are expected to represent the experience of all Black people. The problem with this is that’s impossible. So when we don’t do this, we get criticized for not being Black enough, or being too Black and playing into stereotypes.

The truth is there’s no one way to be Black, so of course Black writers won’t write the same types of stories or focus on the same subjects. And this is a good thing. We need stories diverse in both subject matter and narratives.

Another expectation we must deal with is the belief there can only be one famous Black writer at a time. When we query books, agents often tell us indirectly they can’t take on another book by a Black author because they’re already publishing one this cycle. Yet they have a billion books by white writers. This results in a bottle neck of books by Black, so that one Black writer is pushed forward then ignored.

Moreover, when there’s more than one writer of color trending at a time, the media will often try to pit them against each other, as though people can’t read both a book by a Black writer and one by an Asian Pacific Islander.

The truth is Black writers are expected to outperform their white peers before agents or agents will even consider them. Inclusion and diversity are just buzz words the publishing industry uses to seem woke, but time and again they’ve proven that they only care about Black folks when it’s politically and monetarily convenient.

 I and other Black writers saw this first-hand last summer when, during the height of the protests following George Floyd’s murder, agents put BLM in their bio and opened their DM’s solely to Black Writers. Flashforward a year and many of those same agents ghosted us, and they did the same thing re: Asian and  Pacific Islander writers following the Atlanta spa shootings back in March.    

Publishing talks a good game about being progressive, yet they continually pick books by white people over own vice works.

Conclusion

The truth is Black writers have always had to contend with barriers imposed on them by both the Black community and the larger society as a whole. Diversity in publishing and the media will continue being an issue as long as we continue playing their game. We must stop. sitting at the table if it means compromising our values and dehumanizing us.   

Hell, flip the table and make your own game. We need to write whatever we want and screw being marketable, which is just code for being palatable to the white masses.

Write your truth and fuck the haters.

Call To Action

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