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Okay–Van Jordan, the Idris Elba of poetry, is participating in the Hurston-Wright workshop, along with novelist Mat Johnson. I’ve read both Jordan & Johnson’s work and both are amazing writers, so this should be a worthwhile experience (wish I could go, but I’ve got a wedding to plan & it’s sucking up all my $$$. ) Tuition, which is only $389 for the whole weekend, is due February 19.

Are there subjects black writers can’t write about?

I’m thinking about this after meeting one of my former students for dinner. She asked me about a story I had written, a story featuring a character loosely based on her.

I tried to publish the story in a couple of different journals, but now I wonder if I should have. There’s a reason that story got rejected, and as a writer, it’s my job to figure out why.

A couple of possibilities: the end of the story features a rape, a rape that takes place within the black community, and perhaps there are some topics, because of history, because of more subtle—but still present—racial stereotypes, that black writers just need to leave alone? Or, perhaps, more likely, I simply do not have the skills (the depth and maturity) to write about this subject in a complex, truthful way?

There’s an argument to be made that black writers just shouldn’t go there. The first time I read Sapphire’s Push, I wondered if I were witnessing the Jim Trueblood-ing of literature (those of you who have read Invisible Man know what I’m talking about). We live in a society that still views black men as violent, dangerous, and overly sexual (and black women as emasculating, evil, jezebels), and music, movies, and magazines continuously pound those images into our heads. So it makes sense that we want to want to guard our images, to explore other truths, to tell the myriad other stories—stories of black men and women who fiercely love their families, who seek dignity and respect—that aren’t being told.

But do we leave behind the stories that don’t show us in a “positive” light? Truthfully, part of the reason that some “positive” books and movies about black people don’t receive widespread attention is that they’re not well-told; they don’t “keep it real” (the night I met a former student for dinner, one person in our party said that she fell asleep at a recent viewing of a “positive” black movie.) People are full of contradictions, and those contradictions are what make life interesting. Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King, Gandhi—these are people who made wondrous contributions to society, despite their personal failings. Shining a glowing light on black folks doesn’t generate good art, and it doesn’t begin to erase centuries of racial oppression. Our humanity comes not from creating work that is “positive” or “negative,” but by demonstrating fairness and honesty in our writing.

How do we do that? If we compare Sapphire’s Push with Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, we find answers. Both Push and The Bluest Eye deal with incest in the black community, but Morrison provides the MacTeer family, an in-tact working-class black family, and Claudia, a narrator who has just enough emotional distance from the main character’s (Pecola Breedlove) rape to provide depth and insight. We also get chapters in which Morrison explores Cholly’s thought process–why would he want to rape his own daughter? (So much so that when we read The Bluest Eye in high school, a student in my class grew upset with Morrison for “defending” Cholly.)

Still, do black writers have to have the genius of a Toni Morrison to write about sensitive topics? When I wrote my story, I struggled with creating competing several images of black men and masculinity in one short story. I’ll probably revise this story a few more times before I send it out again because, ultimately, I think the balancing act black writers commit to—this questioning of how to keep it real and show black people in a range of situations and development—makes our writing stronger, our stories richer. I’m also trying to be more gentle in my criticism of Sapphire, and other black writers. I know that, to paraphrase Audre Lorde, these writers are trying to tell their truths and write the best story they can, in the best way they know how.

So black writers are still climbing the racial mountain. But my favorite essay in the world—Langston Hughes’ “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain”–always gives me hope:

If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn’t matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too. The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn’t matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.

For black writers, our commitment to our humanity is part of our craftsmanship.

In a couple of weeks, I’ll teach Their Eyes Were Watching God to students in my African-American lit class.

I’m looking forward to re-reading Their Eyes because every time I read this novel, I discover something new. Their Eyes also makes me think of the Colson Whitehead issue described in the last post: how much should a writer leave out? how much should a writer tell?

Every time I read Hurston’s novel, I always have questions about Phoebe–who is she? Why is she singled out to be Janie’s BFF? How much does she truly know about Janie’s life?

No one I know seems to care about Phoebe, but as one of the novel’s few black women who exists outside of the community, I can’t help but wonder about her.

Once, I had the opportunity to ask novelist Edwidge Danticat about her writing. “Whenever I read your stories, it feels like every sentence has a purpose,” I told her. “How do you do that? How do you make every sentence work?”

Danticat’s response, between giggles, was this: “You must think, Rochelle, that it comes out already birthed.”

Already birthed, meaning already figured out, powdered flesh and ten tiny toes already exquisitely formed. Meaning, that writing takes time, practice; that every writer goes through multiple drafts to figure out what it is she really wants to say and the best way to go about saying it…

I’ve been thinking a lot about writers and the deliberate choices they make. For a long time, I saw storytelling as intuitive, as something people understand or don’t. But now that I’m trying to do the Francine Prose thing and “read like a writer,” I want to understand why writers do certain things…

Which brings me to Colson Whitehead’s latest, Sag Harbor. It took me forever to read this book. (The more I like a book, the longer it takes me to read it. Keep in mind that when I worked at the literary agency, I read most novels in a couple of hours; it took me almost the entire summer to read Sag.) And, a couple of months after finishing it, Sag is one of those books that remains a mystery to me. Not too long ago, I told a friend that elements of Sag utterly enchant me: Benji’s hilarious obsession with Coca-Cola, the musical references that instantly draw me into a specific time and place.

But there are other things about the book that confuse me, that leave me wondering if they add to the book’s achievement or if they are, in fact, flaws. For one, there’s Whitehead’s style. His saturated prose, drips pop cultural references, dazzling images. I appreciate all those shiny, sexy sentences but can’t tell if they’re overkill or not. Sometimes I felt as though I were being told a story by a very cool friend, a friend much more together and knowledgeable than I’ll ever be. And because Benji is supposed to be such a nerd, the entire time I read, I felt a weird sense of inadequacy.

The other thing, the bigger thing, has to do with the novel’s structure. The part of the book I found most intriguing–the part of the book that made me question so much about the black family, my own life–had to do with Benji’s relationship with his father. So much of the book centers on Benji’s relationship with his friends, but when I finished the novel, all I wanted to know about was his family. His family is conveniently (too conveniently???) out of the picture for most of the summer. As readers, we get only glimpses of the tangled emotional abuse that’s the driving force behind how Benji sees himself. And because of what these complicated family relationships tell us about not only Benji but our own lives, I couldn’t help but want to understand them better…

I’ve always felt that black parents tend to be stricter with our children, to offer more structure, more spankings. And I know that part of this comes out of love–for so long, a black child’s misbehavior could mean death (Emmett Till), so we had to learn to control our children, by whatever means we could. But there’s this moment in Sag—when Benji’s watches the Cosby Show and sees the kindness and unabashed love that Cliff shows for his family and longs for a different kind of life— that Whitehead raises some of the greatest questions in “post-racial” America. As black folks become more accepted in larger society, as others recognize the extent of our humanity, will that be reflected in the way we treat ourselves and those closest to us? Will we learn new ways of showing tenderness to each other, of visibly showing compassion to those we love most?

These moments with Benji’s family are so complex and interesting, so real and true, that I forget Whitehead is writing fiction. But these moments are scattered in the book, hidden under other (and to me, lesser) stories. Still, maybe Whitehead is trying to make his readers ponder, maybe he wants to leave us confused, and like Benji, longing.

So what do you think? Does the brightness of Whitehead’s prose take you away from the story? Is Whitehead right to leave some things unexplored, or do you feel as though you need something more?

I always try to be honest when someone asks me to critique their work—I have too much respect for language and story-telling to lie. However, I think there’s a way to give criticism in a way that’s helpful and specific—it doesn’t serve a writer to tell her something isn’t working and then not explain why. Likewise, writers need to hear why a sentence or a chapter works. Receiving empty praise like “that’s good,” can be just as unhelpful as blanket criticism.

That being said, I have friends who ask me to critique their work, and I have no idea what they really want. One friend who always asks me to read her work, but she never sends her work out, doesn’t join writers’ groups or workshops, and as far as I know, doesn’t ask anyone else to read her work. This friend is a good writer, but I question how serious she is—part of being a writer is facing rejection, getting feedback (both positive and negative), and recognizing how the world reacts to your style and worldview. So, when writers don’t seek outside points of view, I question how dedicated they are to telling the best story they can.

Maybe they are afraid they’ll have an experience like this one (from Salon):

http://letters.salon.com/mwt/col/tenn/2009/08/26/bad_novel/view/?show=all

I really, really like this short story collection. I posted a review earlier from the Indiana Review , and a few days ago (my neighbors kept my books for a while, said I wasn’t home that day, but I was home. Were they perhaps trying to jack my books? Hmmm…), my new copy arrived in the mail from Amazon.com (yes, you can get a NEW copy of this book for only $10)…What I love about this collection is how Solomon blends so many diff’t traditions yet has an original style & wit of her own. She has this one story, “That Golden Summer,” that reminds me of Joyce Carol Oates’ classic “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” In another one, “Party on Vorhees,” the language (”everyone had complicated hair”) is so perfect and true, you can’t help but think of Toni Cade Bambara …If you like short fiction, please check this one out!

Check out this interview w/Victor LaValle (one of the people I like) about his new book Big Machine.

The book should come tomorrow & I can’t wait to read it!

Also, this FSU Blogger discusses popular contemporary literature (recent posts include notes about what books are being made into movies). Check it out:

http://naysue.wordpress.com/

Happy Reading! :)

http://www.robertswartwood.com/?page_id=8

Tentatively scheduled for the fall of 2010, W.W. Norton will publish an anthology of Hint Fiction. What is Hint Fiction? It’s a story of 25 words or less that suggests a larger, more complex story. The thesis of the anthology is to prove that a story 25 words or less can have as much impact as a story 2,500 words or longer. The anthology will include between 100 and 150 stories. We want your best work. Submissions will open August 1 and close at midnight Eastern time August 31. Submit only to this address: hint.fiction@gmail.com