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That's what Arielle Loren is wrestling with over at Clutch. When Loren was younger, she appreciated that there was a space where she could easily find the books she said reflected her interests. But now that she's a professional writer, she wonders if the black section is keeping black authors' work from getting a wider reading.
"Why not diversify mainstream front store literature to reflect the multicultural reality of this country?" she asks. "More than black readers ought to be reading black literature."
It's a worthy question, considering how much fewer people are buying books and how thin the connective tissue often is between the books arrayed under the black banner. A bookstore might house Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father, Octavia Butler's Kindred and Zane's The Heat Seekers --- memoir, sci-fi/fantasy, and erotica, respectively --- all on the same shelves. Having serious fiction rubbing up against street-lit and bodice-rippers could leave some writers feeling relegated to some literary ghetto. (Um, pardon the phrasing.)
"As an author and a former bookstore employee, anything that potentially makes a book harder to find could be a concern," Danielle Evans, the author of the lauded Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, told BlackVoices. "I have on occasion walked out of a bookstore or bought something else after not finding a book that I was looking for in the lit section, and then blocks away realized I should have asked if it was in the af-am section, because it can be hard to remember which stores shelve what where, and which stores have African-American sections."
But she was ambivalent about the prospect of scuttling them altogether. "I think we can give African American readers enough credit to think they won't stop finding or buying books just because they're mixed in with the larger book section, she said. "But I think they can still signal a 'you are welcome here,' which might be meaningful to people who are often made to feel not welcome in retail spaces? It's sad that that would be necessary, and if there is a benefit, there is certainly also a cost, but it's not something to write off completely."
What, fair readers, do you think?
What, fair readers, do you think?
Comments: (18)
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By: Jim on 7/11/2011 8:37PM
"Why not diversify mainstream front store literature to reflect the multicultural reality of this country?" she asks. "More than black readers ought to be reading black literature."
Really? I've got news for you. No one other than black readers have any interest in "black literature". For that matter, no one other than black people have any interest in black movies. That's why they are always low budget and play predominately in black neighborhoods.
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By: dclpn1986 on 7/11/2011 9:03PM
It's about time someone spoke up about this. I am surprised in the low response to comment on this.
It is sad that Black people are not speaking out.
Between the white policians and the racist remarks that they are getting away with sickens me. Come on people, let's get it together.
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By: Jan Ross on 7/12/2011 9:53AM
I like section for Blacks,that way I don't have to walk all over the whole store looking for that section or book
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By: bill on 7/13/2011 11:08AM
I looked and i looked and I looked some more...where, I wondered, is the WHITE section??????
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By: Willie A on 7/12/2011 12:33PM
Yes, there should be a section for African Americans. Whites should read about slavery and Jim Crow and the horrifying effects those institutions had on African Americans, but they won't! Lets be real, the vast majority of whites don't WON'T TO read African American literature that deals with RACE AND RACISM. Whites do not won't read books covering African American experiences that talk about the LEGAL EXCLUSION OF BLACKS FROM ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL IMPROVEMENT ALONG WITH LEGAL EXPLOITATION THROUGH LABOR AND SEX. They don't won't to know about SEGREGATION AND HOW GROUPS LIKE THE PANTHERS TRIED TOT REMOVE SUCH DISGRACEFUL ACTS. Anything from the past THAT CONTINUES TO IMPACT US WHITES DON'T WONT TO DEAL WITH IT! So, yes we need a section of our own where these books can be found. I am a history major working on a Ph. D. and if I went into a bookstore searching for literature that covers African Americans, I would NOT WON'T TO SEARCH THE ENTIRE STORE TO FIND SUCH TOPICS THAT COVER AFRICAN AMERICANS AND SHOULD BE SECLUDED IN ITS OWN SECTION. Furthermore, in that secluded section any and everybody can still read the literature.
This is a farce on the part of certain bookstores. YOU CAN'T INTEGRATE LIFE THROUGH BOOKS THAT SPECIFICALLY DEAL WITH ENIGMATIC AND DYNAMIC ISSUES THAT ARE POSITIONED ON OPPOSITE ENDS OF THE LIFE SPECTRUM. So FORGET IT! If I owned a bookstore, I would not mix books covering slavery or the Harlem Renaissance with books covering white Americans in the late 19th and early 20th century. I would not mix in books or literature written about or by W. E. B. Du Bois and Garvey with literature that does not deal with the issues they were trying to improve for blacks with books that were written concerning whites. I mean how DUMB DOES THAT LOOK? Two different struggles, two different issues, TWO DIFFERENT SECTIONS!
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By: Shauna Roberts on 7/12/2011 1:09PM
I'd like to point out that Borders does segregate its books, but Barnes & Noble (shown in the picture accompanying this post) does not, at least not in any of the cities I've lived in.
I'm a white person, and I read many books by black authors. However, I feel uncomfortable going into the black section of the bookstore. For reasons I don't understand, I feel I don't belong there.
Willie A., above, makes some good points. I think one possible solution is to have the black section of the bookstore specialize in nonfiction books (history, biography, memoir, political analysis) about the black experience in America, particularly slavery, segregation, and civil rights. It should get a new title, too, that welcomes white people who are interested in these topics. Science fiction books belong in the science fiction section, no matter what color the author. Ditto for romance books, mystery books, etc.
My 2ยข.
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By: Willie A on 7/12/2011 1:49PM
You CANNOT CHANGE THE TITLE OF SLAVERY AND JIM CROW OR SEGREGATION. THEY ARE WHAT THEY ARE. If you are suggesting changing such titltes, then that would change HISTORY AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF HISTORY. Furthermore, you said you don't feel comfortable walking into such sections, why? Any person can read such books. That's the whole point the idea of being uncomfortable, which needs to disappear. The longlasting and stinging effects of slavery are not going away anytime soon. So to shy away form the issues only exasperates the problem of not relaizing and understanding issues that continue to plague AFRCIAN AMERICANS AND THIS COUNTRY. Feeling shame will not improve a lack understanding about the history of problems that have traveled through time and still somewhat impact black people. Reading and learning about such issues will OPEN YOUR EYES, giving you a better understanding of where African American people are coming from and what we are dealing dealing with ON A DAILY BASIS.
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By: Dianne on 7/12/2011 2:16PM
Let me tell you how this African-American & African Literature worked out at the nytimes.com
on-line forums of The New York Times.
In 1993, Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize; she had been hired to teach at Princeton. I was then living in Lawrenceville, kitty-corner from the Lawrenceville prep school which is considered a "Feeder" school into Princeton University.
Never once did I catch sight of her around Princeton campus or when I went shopping in the borough, although I enjoyed the amenities of the campus Dillon Gym for swimming and the requisite coed phy-ed as a dependent of a Princeton Univ.Press employee. Nontheless, I met all of three A.A.women at the gymnasium facilities and we recognized each other crossing campus as a result. So whom was it that Ms.Morrison was teaching and what do you suppose she was teaching?
I hadn't realized that she had retired after 17 years of teaching but suggest it may have been some time around 2006 when a vote of her American Writer Peers voted her Best among them (both Black and White but they were largely White American renowned writers) and opinions were asked of the general public when this made the literary headlines at The New York Times.
What stands out in my memory was the white Southerner and fellow-poster at nytimes.com Book Forums who reproached me in the posting remarks garnering the opinions of the public about Toni Morrison's win as other Famous Writers judged her abilities by her work.
This probably middle-aged woman berated my thinking Morrison exceptional because, as far as she was concerned, she had never heard Blacks talk as they did in Ms. Morrison's novels. (Do tell? since I have my own opinions about that.) She was either the poster who had been a student at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge; or, she was the woman from Texas whose immediate forebears had been hard-scrabble dirt farmers.
I was mildly shocked by this edict that set her up as an authority on the rhythms Ms. Morrison ought to have writing dialogue for her characters in her novels. I knew it was presumptive.
Did this mean that all those other American writers who happened to be White were aesthetically and professionally wrong about their vote for Toni Morrison?
Notably in recent weeks her home in Princeton has come up for sale and the realtors have given us slides of the photos of the rooms of her house and the exterior which provide a clarity of how the mind of this writer works. I am not at all certain where she is retiring to and is she staying in the community at Princeton Borough or going back up north to the Finger Lakes region of New York?
In the interim, one day the moderator of the Book Forums at nytimes.com decided to disband the African-American and African Literature forum; too few of us discussed the literature? This despite the turnout that resulted for Edware P. Jones' prize winner, The Known World (an Amistad Book).
I ended one New Year's Eve by finishing up my rather singular unattended to discussion of Ms. Morrison's,LOVE. The only person who commented was a young, highly intelligent African-American who was almost immediately returning to Africa as a medical worker and who thanked me, stating she would like to get around to reading this small novel. I hoped it would make it to the Movies!
Anyway, the moderator did away with the AA&A.Lit. Book Forum. Irony is that he did this on the verge of the Obama campaign. Since I was no longer writing in the context of literature that nobody wanted to read anyway because they were white and hadn't yet discovered that maybe they might want to know more than Michele Bachmann thinks she knows, I just transfered my allegiance to writing in favor of Obama's presidency, day after day, surely and convinced.
I see nothing wrong in have a section in particular for the many classics in the field because after all think of it this way: French Literature (trans.into English) has one. As so others. No shame, no blame and there is ease of locating where the book you want happens to be.
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By: ShaunaRoberts on 7/12/2011 2:22PM
Willie A, I may not have made myself clear enough in my comments. I DO read many books by and about black people, but I buy them at B&N or an independent store or online, because the African-American section name in Borders makes me feel as if it's not for white people, as if I'm going into a place I'm not invited. In contrast to, say, Eso Wan Books in Los Angeles, which feels inviting both in its name and in the friendly staff who welcome people in.
Also, I wasn't suggesting changing the titles of the BOOKS about slavery or Jim Crow or segregation, only the name of the section of the store where such books are shelved and what books are shelved there. People who want to read about the important issues black people have faced and still are facing should not have to wade through a mishmash of science fiction, romance, erotica, mystery, and other books to find the serious nonfiction.
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By: mary on 7/12/2011 2:24PM
i would become a new customer at barnes & noble
if there is a seperate section for african-american
literacy....
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