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Blogs by Tichaona Chinyelu
This is where I'm at?
8/11/2007 1:49:29 PM
I just finished listening to an interview on an online radio station. The author interviewed was asked what advice she would give self-publishers. She said "know your audience". It really made me question "who is my audience?".
There's this quote going around "if you want to hide knowledge from black people, put it in a book". This quote (a kind of "joke") is based on the understanding that black people don't read.
But...
if you were to take Essence's book lists at their word, black people do read. According to Essence, this is what they/we are reading:
Fiction - Hardcover
1. Sleeping With Strangers by Eric Jerome Dickey (Dutton, $24.95)*
2. When Somebody Loves You Back by Mary B. Morrison (Dafina Books, $24) (6)
3. The First Lady by Carl Weber (Dafina Books, $24.95) (10)
4. Love & Lies by Kimberla Lawson Roby (William Morrow, $23.95) (1)
5. Borrow Trouble by Mary Monroe and Victor McGlothin (Dafina Books, $24.95)*
6. Love is Never Painless by Zane, Eileen M. Johnson and V. Anthony Rivers (Atria, $22.95) (3)
7. Red River by Lalita Tademy (Warner Books, $24.99) (4)
8. She Ain't the One by Carl Weber and Mary B. Morrison (Dafina Books, $24) (2)
9. Killing Johnny Fry by Walter Mosley (Bloomsbury USA, $23.95)*
10. God Don't Play by Mary Monroe (Dafina Books, $24) (9)
Fiction - Paperback
1. Forever a Hustler's Wife by Nikki Turner (One World/Ballantine, $13.95)*
2. In Cahootz by Quentin Carter (Triple Crown Publications, $15) (3)
3. Thug Matrimony by Wahida Clark (Dafina Books, $15)*
4. Death Before Dishonor by 50 Cent and Nikki Turner (G-Unit/Pocket Books, $12)*
5. Grindin' by Danielle Santiago (Atria, $14)*
6. Thong on Fire by Noire (Atria, $14)*
7. Deadly Reigns by Teri Woods (Teri Woods Publishing, $14.95)*
8. Tales of the Out & the Gone by Amiri Baraka (Akashic Books, $14.95)*
9. The Girl With the Golden Shoes by Colin Channer (Akashic Books, $13.95)*
10. In Firm Pursuit by Pamela Samuels-Young (Kimani Press/Sepia, $14.95)*
Nonfiction - Hardcover
1. The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama (Crown, $25) (1)
2. What I Know for Sure by Tavis Smiley (Doubleday, $23.95) (2)
3. A Hand to Guide Me by Denzel Washington (Meredith Books, $24.95) (6)
4. The Women Who Raised Me: A Memoir by Victoria Rowell (William Morrow, $25.95)*
5. The Secret by Rhonda Byrne (Atria/Beyond Words, $23.95)*
6. It's No Secret by Carmen Bryan (VH-1 Books/Pocket Books, $24.95) (3)
7. The Laws of Thinking by Bishop E. Bernard Jordan (Hay House, $24.95)*
8. Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Free Press, $26.00)*
9. Forty Million Dollar Slaves by William C. Rhoden (Crown, $23.95)*
10. Medical Apartheid by Harriet A. Washington (Doubleday, $27.95)*
Nonfiction - Paperback
1. The Measure of a Man by Sidney Poitier (HarperSanFransciso, $14.95)*
2. The Willie Lynch Letter by Kashif Malik Hassan-el (Frontline Distribution International, $3.95) (1)
3. Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama (Three Rivers Press, $14.95)*
4. The Pursuit of Happyness by Chris Gardner (Amistad, $14.95)*
5. The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson (African American Images, $12.95) (3)
6. The Covenant in Action edited by Tavis Smiley (Smiley Books, $10)*
7. Confessions of a Video Vixen by Karrine Steffans (Amistad, $14.95)*
8. The Covenant With Black America by Tavis Smiley (Third World Press, $12) (2)
9. Sacred Woman by Queen Afua (One World/Ballantine, $17.95)*
10. MAAT: The 11 Laws of God by Ra Un Nefer Amen (Kamit Publications, $12.95)*
The only one book on these lists that was recommended to me by friends (word of mouth, apparently, being the most effective advertising tool) is:
10. Medical Apartheid by Harriet A. Washington (Doubleday, $27.95)*
I know of Carl Weber's work because I took a trip home when I was pregnant and asked my cousin for books to read. She provided me with a gang of books; one of which was Baby Momma Drama. I was soon to be a "baby momma" but I didn't recognize myself in any of the characters of that particular story.
I also read one of Zane's books and I couldn't recognize myself in any of the characters.
Am I an anomaly?
You see, even though I consider myself an urban Afrikan woman, I am not of the streets. In high school, I was exposed to The Color Purple (by a classmate) and The Autobiography of Malcolm X (by a teacher). Even before that I was exposed to the culture of resistance that Maya Angelou describes as "black people's honorable tradition" through the music my Mother listened to. The first song I remember listening to was History of Africa by Denzil Dennis (The Classics).
Once I was in a mental and emotional place to be open to that tradition, I never looked back. My interest in literature was framed by that perspective. When I started writing, I believed knowledge was power but I didn't believe knowledge should be abstracted from the struggle for liberation. I didn't, and don't, adhere to (for lack of a better term) period of defeat literature.
I see the same phenomenon in hip hop music.The most appealing music/beat has the most backwards lyrics. The most conscious lyrics have a beat that you can't dance to...or even nod your head to...because the backward lyrics overpower the beat.
So where do I, author of two self-published books, fit it? Who is my audience? Apparently the audience that I think of as mine is dancing/gravitating to tight beats with backwards lyrics.
It makes me question what is the value of revolutionary poets in the current scheme of things. Is there a place where we can get in where we fit in? Or do we have to struggle to help create that place so that our voices are not assimilated and/or co-opted? What happens in the meantime? How do we live? How do we make it possible for our art to economically sustain us without giving up the ghost of the ancestors?
This is where I'm at?
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August 2007 Blogs
• This is where I'm at? - Saturday, August 11, 2007
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