“expensive curation”

A few months ago when I was first contacted by Amazon Encore, I did an online search to find out more about the venture.  This article came up; I read it with interest, and never forgot the (anonymous) author’s equation: “publishing = expensive curation.”

Publishers have controlled the direction and profits in the books market for so long, and the market has changed so little, that they are especially inclined to feel that the world of books revolves around them. Well, does it?

If we look at the core value that publishers provide, it’s Curation – they decide what books are good enough to print for book lovers.

Yes, there is value provided in other ways i.e. polishing a book, marketing it, etc. However, if we had to name the single, most critical role that publishers fulfill it would be ’Deciding what Books to Publish’.

Publishers separate the wheat from the chaff, and they are far from perfect.

Amen to that!  This afternoon I helped an artist friend move her performance props from a downtown gallery back to Brooklyn.  I asked her what she felt curation was; she replied, “The selection and arrangement of materials, sometimes according to a particular theme or guiding principle.”  I then asked her if she felt curators were the same as gatekeepers, and she felt there was some overlap but that the two jobs were essentially distinct.  I made a similar comment on my earlier post re: editor feedback; unlike journal or anthology editors, children’s book editors aren’t (supposed to be) selecting books according to a theme or guiding principle.  Aren’t they supposed to be looking for engaging, original, diverse stories?  I’m trying to develop a better appreciation for just what it is that editors DO.  And I have to say, reading some editors’ blogs only makes me feel more frustrated.  Brooklyn Arden has a new post in which she draws parallels between homogeneity in children’s publishing and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ explanation for the lack of black television writers.  Coates reminds dissatisfied television viewers that the legacy of white supremacy and institutional racism can’t be undone in just a few decades.  I recently read a Variety article, “Little Diversity Progress Among Writers,” that gives disheartening statistics on the lack of progress being made in television and film, two fields still dominated by white men.  Of course, only the delusional think we’re living in a “post-racial” moment; most reasonable folks won’t deny the ongoing reality AND legacy of institutional racism, and how many barriers are still in place to prevent people of color from getting a foot in the door and/or rising to positions of authority.  When it comes to the arts/entertainment industry, most of us are still banging on the closed door, hoping America will live up to its promise of equal opportunity.  Now, Coates suggests in the Comments section of his blog that it’s unrealistic for anyone to expect to find more black writers in arts/entertainment because it takes time and money to learn how to write, and most black folks don’t have those luxuries:

Again, speaking only for magazines, it takes a particular person who can write, and then a particular person who can write in that format. This isn’t simply a talent question, it takes a particular endurance, and it takes time to develop that endurance. How do you get that time? Money–or a willingness to live without it. Take color out the equation–there are very few people who can do the job. Finding good writers–of any color–is extremely difficult.

Now, just speaking for a black people, look at a group that’s only 13 percent of the pop, and isn’t as well educated. Then take the fact that the group’s families tend to be less wealthy, thus making it hard to get the time to get good. Take into account that, often, when someone from this group “makes it” they have brothers/sisters/mothers/grandmothers/grandfathers who they have to also worry about. I think a lot of us say, “Man, I [got] kids to feed” and go for the sure thing. The point is that you’re already talking about a small pool, and for black people it’s almost certainly even smaller.

Does this mean media should say, “Oh well, we tried.” Nope. But it means media should get smarter. If you really are concerned about diversity then you need to start with high school kids. You can’t start looking for fully formed adults. You need to set aside fellowships for people from particular economic backgrounds to help them learn the craft. You have to think broader and bigger.

I don’t disagree with the core goal, I just suspect that it may require more than we think.

As I’ve said before on this blog, I think the way forward requires us to develop multiple strategies; it’s a complex situation, and an either/or mentality really doesn’t help.  So I agree with most of what Coates says, EXCEPT for the bit where he says publishers (or film/TV producers) shouldn’t expect to find “fully formed adult” writers in the black community.  I guess because we’ve all been stunted by centuries of racism and its attendant economic oppression?  As writer/educator Cathie Wright-Lewis pointed out on my Facebook page, what about the hundreds of amazing writers who make up the African American literary tradition?  For hundreds of years, black writers have persisted in spite of the conditions designed to crush their creative impulses.  There isn’t one way to become a writer, and while there may be certain optimal conditions for producing great literature, African Americans have mostly had to do without.  I agree with commenters like Cocolamala who writes:

but why assume that qualified writers of color don’t already exist and have been attempting to enter the industry since it began? the excuses put out by the old boys network speak to those writers (your perspective is not marketable, blah blah blah), but that writers of color don’t exist or lack equal skills isn’t the problem…lack of access to opportunity, resistance at entry points into professional networks — that’s a problem.

S/he writes in again to leave this comment:

i don’t think that phenomenon can be solely attributed to a lack of professional-level talent on the part of hollywood writers of color – can we not also talk about disinterest in the stories that writers of color tell, or the lack of industry outreach when achieving “diversity” is not the goal.

There were 92 comments altogether; I’m going back now to read the rest.  Could we produce MORE great writers if we transformed conditions in the black community and the US in general?  Of course.  But we can’t only focus on the future; if we do, we risk neglecting the *current* battle to give TODAY’s artists a fair shake.

PS Check out Neesha Meminger’s take on this bizarre idea that writers of color are “too damaged” to produce great books.

give a teacher a hug…

…or better yet, give a teacher a BOOK!  Shadra directed me to this lovely, long review of BIRD by a teacher who’s pretty much seen it all: violence inside the classroom, violence out in the street, no textbooks, no desks, no a/c (resulting in 109 degrees in the classroom)…when are we going to make our kids a priority?  Make sure you scroll all the way to the end to watch the inspiring video of a young artist.  If only we treated EVERY child as though s/he had just as much potential…

fair and balanced

Now, I’ve had a LOT of good news lately, so I’m just going to take this in stride.  An editor sent her comments on a couple of my stories…

[Story #1] really captures the mood and feelings that came up after 9/11, and I like the almost-magical realism of the world you’ve created. I can’t point to the writing. All I can say is that this manuscript doesn’t feel like a good fit for me.

That’s what I usually get: not a good fit.  Which, in my mind, is the point Neesha was trying to make in her post about aesthetics.  There’s nothing actually wrong with the story or the writing, the editor just doesn’t want it.  Can’t really argue with that, can you?  She said she liked “Munecas,” but had a laundry list of things she wants changed, so we’ll be moving on…

release

So I made a kid cry today…I didn’t mean to, of course, but we were doing a writing exercise and when I asked for volunteers to read their work aloud, her hand shot up at the end and then I saw teardrops falling onto her khakis.  What amazes me about kids is how open they’re willing to be, even when they feel most vulnerable.  The exercise is to write a postcard to someone who’s far away; we listen to music, we talk about emotions, I share a postcard I wrote to my older brother, and then they go to work.  At first I only had two volunteers, and both kids told funny stories—memories of jumping on the bed with siblings, or getting her head stuck in one of the games at Chuck E. Cheese.  But then one girl read her postcard, and she laughed a little as she told us about how her father once threw her in a snowbank for fun and she got hurt instead.  But he didn’t mean to hurt her, and he rushed over to make it better, and now he’s gone and she misses him.  We clapped for her, and I told her what I liked about her writing, and then she hung her head and her tears started to fall.  It’s happened before, and I always have to consider what’s best: stop and go to the child to offer comfort, or keep going and hope another adult will handle it instead.  Today I opted to keep going b/c if *I* stop, all eyes are on me, and then all eyes will be on the child.  Today, I think the assistant principal took the girl outside; I finished up my lesson, put on my coat, and then the girl came back in and quietly said, “Thanks.”  “Thank YOU,” I said, “for having the courage to share your memories.”

Are the young naturally more courageous than we are?  Why did she want to share her postcard—did she not know she was going to get upset?  She must have, I think…Sometimes I wonder if it’s irresponsible of me to stir up their emotions and then leave.  I’m going back next week, and we’ll turn their postcards into full-length stories for picture books.  The teacher at that junior high is *amazing* (and Canadian!) and we reminisced for a moment about how Ezra Jack Keats’ books were the only ones we read as kids that featured black children.  Ah, the Great White North.  But while I’m talking about Canada, let me give a shout out to the Toronto Women’s Bookstore, which (to my knowledge) is the only store in Canada offering A Wish After Midnight to its patrons!  Sisters are doin’ it for themselves…

When I got home, I found an email from the wonderful coordinator at UFT—I’ll be giving another talk to teachers’ union members on February 23rd, so mark your calendar!  Looks like another hundred books will be given away to those in attendance…teachers rule!

wow!

I should be sleeping, or editing my manuscript, or writing a new chapter…but instead I’m wide awake, and thoroughly enjoying the comments on my previous post.  And then I got a Google alert and watch OUT!  There’s another awesome review of A Wish After Midnight over at Gal Novelty (who is also wingstodust)!  The very first Canadian review and it couldn’t be better…shall sleep with a smile tonight…

perfect ending

These kind of emails make my day…this one’s from an ELA teacher in Bed-Stuy:

Zetta, the students looooove Midnight! I was slow in getting started and a few started without me, telling me how much they were enjoying it.  I wanted to say STOP, but didn’t have the heart.  THEY WERE READING ON THEIR OWN WITH NO PRESSURE!!!  Also, a few of the students are already finished, which means they are reading it again, with me, for a deeper interpretation.  I need your next book now! lol

I MUST get the sequel done!

aftertaste

Sometimes I wonder about the timing of book releases…I just finished reading Flygirl by Sherri L. Smith, and found myself making endless comparisons to Mare’s War by Tanita S. Davis, which I read several months ago.  I’d heard great things about Flygirl and it was original and interesting, but it was hard to read the novel without standing the protagonist next to Mare–and I’m afraid, time after time, Mare won.  My friend Laura first told me about this novel, I think, and may even have pointed me to a joint interview between Tanita and Sherri; and I recall at the time wondering if a book about passing would resonate with 21st century teens.  Would it seem like “selling out” to them, or would it just seem like a fun sort of prank?  Flygirl is about the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) who were recruited during WWII to help “free a man to fight” overseas.  Ida Mae desperately wants to fly, but knows her race holds her back; she can go up north to a school that certifies black pilots, or she can stay in the South where both her race and her gender work against her.  When the opportunity arises to interview for the WASP, Ida Mae decides to “pass” for white since she’s already often mistaken for a white woman with her straight hair and fair skin.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t convinced by the author’s depiction of life in Louisiana for working class black folks.  Like most black women, Ida Mae works as a domestic, but strangely, the whites whose homes she cleans are never around…Ida Mae has NO interaction with segregationist whites at all, which is KEY, I think, to establishing the motive behind the passing phenomenon.  Yes, life is easier for whites in the South, but that’s just the “pull” factor—the “push” factor includes horrific, daily violence against blacks, including the regular sexual assault of black women by white men (especially those working in white homes as domestics).  Later in the novel when Ida Mae falls in love with a white man twice her age, it was hard for me to invest in her emotions—same thing happened when she arrived at training camp and almost instantly bonded with two other white girls in the group.  Granted, those girls were “outsiders” too–Patsy’s a carnival worker and Lily’s Jewish.  But from what I know about the Jim Crow South, and from what I know about passing narratives in the African American literary tradition, it isn’t easy to warm up to folks who could turn and kill you on a dime—and from whom you’ve been socially segregated all your life.  In most passing narratives, there’s a moment when someone from the character’s previous “black” life recognizes her and holds the power to destroy the entire illusion.  There’s also often an instance of extreme violence, which either pushes the passer into the white world for good, or restores the black identity s/he foolishly tried to disown.  Neither of those things happened in Flygirl.  I needed more information about Ida; her relationships aren’t fully fleshed out, even though she claims to be passing in order to help her beloved older brother who’s fighting in a colored regiment overseas.  In Mare’s War, the bond between the two sisters was established immediately, with Mare risking her own life to save Feen from a predatory male.  We also see Mare riding the bus, and being humiliated by a white woman.  Later in the novel, when Mare has the chance to socialize with white women in a London pub, she freezes—it’s awkward, and the interracial mingling ends with mob violence…THAT is believable to me b/c it corresponds with everything I know about race and gender relations.  Ida’s behavior towards her one black female friend is appalling, and never resolved (she tells Jolene, “your skin’s so dark all you’ll ever be is a housemaid”).  Um–what?  So perhaps what troubles me is that Ida functions for most of the novel as a white girl, or “just a regular girl,” or as a pilot.  And that IS her dream…but it leaves out a lot of the complexity of colorism and racism and the strained relationship between black and white women.  There are some exciting flight scenes, but the training isn’t as rigorous as what Mare went through (remember that gas mask scene?) and the writing overall isn’t quite as riveting.

Now, I just picked up Walter Dean Myers’s latest novel, Riot.  If you don’t already know, it’s a story about the New York City Draft Riots told from the perspective of a teenage girl…sound familiar?  Readers already think of Octavia Butler’s Kindred when they read A Wish After Midnight; will the same thing happen when they read Myer’s Riot?  Will my novel suffer for the comparison?  I think I would have judged Flygirl much differently if Mare hadn’t already been in my head.  But in the end, we need lots of stories told from lots of different perspectives, right?  And each writer has to tell her story her way…

guess what?

Author Kelly Starling Lyons let me know that BIRD is featured in the December issue of Ebony!  We’re not sure if it’s only online, or in the print magazine, too, but you can check it out here.

“I got sunshine on a cloudy day…”

We’re expecting rain all day today as this “nor’easter” moves along the Atlantic coast, but I’ve got three things to brighten my day: 1) I wrote a new chapter last night, and if I do say so myself, it’s GREAT; 2) the young ladies over at Taste Life Twice have posted a fabulous review & interview about Wish, and 3) I’m meeting Neesha Meminger and Lyn Miller-Lachmann for breakfast!  Tomorrow I’ll be selling & signing books at the ABENY Conference up in Harlem—if you’re an educator in the NYC-area, do drop by; there’s still room in some of the workshops…

THE ASSOCIATION OF BLACK EDUCATORS OF NEW YORK

Presents:

FALL CONFERENCE 2009

“PARENTS, EDUCATORS, STUDENTS AND COMMUNITY-BASED

ORGANIZATIONS SERVING AND SUPPORTING THE

COMMUNITY”

SPECIAL INVITED GUEST SPEAKERS AT OUR PLENARY :

Santiago Taveras, Deputy Chancellor for Teaching and Learning,

Department of Education

Councilwoman Inez Dickens, District 9, Manhattan

Councilwoman Darlene Mealy, District 41, Brooklyn

FREDERICK DOUGLASS ACADEMY

149^th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2009

8:00 A.M. -2:00 P.M.

Registration: 8-9 AM   Plenary: 9-10 AM    Workshops: 10:15 – 1:30 PM

(Travel Directions: # 3 train to 148^th Street; Entrance to parking is

at 150^th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard).

It’s OFFICIAL!

Ok, the official press release has gone out; you can read it here, or you can just tell me what you think of the new cover:

The new Amazon Encore edition of Wish will come out in February 2010, but you can pre-order your copy now.  I guess I should be on cloud nine, but right now I feel like my little self-publishing adventure/experiment has simply taken another turn—definitely a turn for the better, but it doesn’t erase all the hard work that went into promoting the first version of my novel.  I’d like to thank EVERYONE who supported me, my novel, and my desperate attempt to buck the system.  My prof in graduate school urged us to remember that there’s always a “third way”—my hope is that Amazon Encore will open the door for the many talented writers who have been marginalized for way too long…