A confession



Holly wrote a piece on being an outsider today (partially dealing with the segregation of African American authors to their own section in bookstores), and ultimately directed folks to a couple of other blogs. One belongs to Monica Jackson who I found to be refreshing, funny, and in a similar mindset with me. She's on the daily blog list at right, along with good company.

But as fun as Monica seems to be, I have to admit I don't read black romances. Hell, I don't read romances at all black or otherwise. As a confession I suppose that rates pretty small on the ohmygawd! scale, but there it is. I used to read romances, a long time ago, but they were mostly flowery Kathleen E Woodwiss and I out grew her rather quickly. Many of my writer friends, published and not, write romances to so I'm trying to bite the bullet and jump in, but I'm finding it rather difficult.

Whew! Got that off my chest.

Back to african american books for a sec tho. I haven't noticed, in myself, a definite tendency to avoid them. I like the ones I've read (I've worn out copies of The Color Purple, for example) but I don't go out specifically looking for books by black authors either. If I hear something's a good read I don't care if the writer is white, black, hispanic, ancient egyptian, or from the planet Zolton in the Horseshoe Nebula. Male, female, gay, straight, married, single or none of the above doesn't matter to me either. All I care about is a good story.

Word is that men make more money, even in writing fiction. Whites make more. Probably straight folks and Christians too (at least here in the US). I don't think that's fair. Writers and other skilled craftspeople should be judged on their ability to produce quality products that sell, that resonate with their consumers, nothing more. Why is it anyone else's business what color your skin is, what church you attend or who you sleep with? I think it should be like that for any job. Paid according to the work you do and the quality you create. It always ticked me off that in the working world men got promoted first and made more money. That minorities were overlooked. That older folks were forced into retirement. God help you if you're an aging hispanic lesbian wiccan. You're screwed.

I don't think that separating books by their writer's race/class/creed/religion is the answer. Sure it might make the expected audience have an easier time locating them, but is that really doing the reader or the writer a service? Doesn't it just pigeon hole us all? What about cross pollination? I face that too, every day. I write mysteries but they happen to take place in a fantasy setting so that's where they're shelved. Is Dubric's world like Pern? Nope, not at all. What about Middle Earth? Nope, not that either. I think his world is highly approachable by any fiction reader. Straight mystery/thriller readers like my book, the problem is getting them to even know it's there, then they have to step into the fantasy isle to pick it up. I hear that a lot, actually. I heard Ghosts was good, but it's in the (insert whine) Fantasy section. (eeew! that's disgusting!) I'm sure writers like Monica face similar trials, probably a lot worse than I do.

No one will ever know about other great books if they don't step out of their comfort zones. I try to cover all the fiction areas, but I don't. I rarely peruse amongst romances, never even notice westerns. Otherwise, genre speaking, sure. I've happily bought and read all over the place from gritty spy thriller to artsy literature. Heck, we even have Manga here at home and between the three of us, we cover almost everything.

I think though, next time I'm in Borders or B&N, I might just buy In My Dreams . Expand my horizons a little.

Posted: Thu - February 24, 2005 at 02:11 PM         |

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