a voice from the other side…an editor speaks

The truth is, I don’t know that many editors; they’re mostly a mystery to me.  When they blog, it’s often done anonymously or they say things that drive me nuts (the Coretta Scott King Award is racist; black people are so blighted by racism they can’t produce literary fiction).  So in an effort to understand [...]

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“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 [...]

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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 [...]

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film dreams…

For years now I’ve been saying that I think I’m going to move into film…and then last year I got a Macbook and I thought, “This is it!”  A month later I made a trailer for my YA novel, and thought, “Yes!  I’m on my way!”  And then….nada.  This morning I spent some time editing [...]

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sacred ground

This morning, despite going to 26 Broadway instead of 26 Wall St., I took a wonderful tour of lower Manhattan led by the African Burial Ground Museum’s Ranger Doug.  It can be hard to imagine New York as it used to be, hundreds of years ago…now there are mostly skyscrapers, and business types, and tourists [...]

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a painted fable

Hurray!  Diary of an Anxious Black Woman is blogging again!  And I have to share her latest post, of course.  Stop by her site to see a sweet fable written & painted by Faith Ringgold about how the world became colorblind…

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flavor of the month?

I have a hard time with one month of the year being designated to one particular minority group (or, in this case, two: American Indians and Alaska Natives).  It has potential benefits, but generally, I think these one-month celebrations just further marginalize people whose history, culture, and literature ought to be celebrated all year round.  [...]

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timing

They say timing is everything, right?  So my birthday week got off to a great start, and I was really moved and inspired by what I learned at the African Burial Ground Museum.  But THEN, I made the mistake of going to see Chris Rock’s film, Good Hair, the very next day.  I don’t know [...]

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African Burial Ground Memorial

For all those who were lost
For all those who were stolen
For all those who were left behind
For all those who are not forgotten
If you’re ever in NYC, make sure you stop by the African Burial Ground Memorial.  It’s another one of those things that has been on my To Do list forever…so this morning I [...]

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Beware the Single Story

Please watch this short video of the brilliant Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in which she describes the effect of reading only British stories as a child (she, in turn, wrote only stories of white children marveling at snow, eating apples, and drinking ginger beer).  A “single story” reduces a diverse, dignified people to something [...]

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