Via Salt Lick, this, from A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing:
Some African American authors are being marketed solely as African American authors, and they’re shelved in the African American section of bookstores, even though their books have absolutely nothing to do with African Americans.
In other words, a black author writes a sci-fi novel, or a romance, or literary fiction, and it’s automatically catagorized as African American even if it doesn’t contain a single black character.
Is this fair? Is it racist?
I encourage the folks already blogging about this topic to post their views here.
I also encourage the regular readers of this blog to visit here and weigh in on the conversation.
And finally, I encourage folks to post their views about this topic on their own blogs.
Okay then, consider it done — though I may take a somewhat different approach and discuss the topic by way of moving through literary identity politics.
A while back, I taught Toni Morrison’s Beloved as part of an honor’s seminar, “You can’t spell history without the ‘story’: History and Memory in the Fictive and Imaginaryâ€Â. As part of that seminar, I invited Dr. Barbara Wilcots, a Morrison scholar (and a woman whom I greatly admire), to come speak to the class about Morrison’s place in contemporary fiction — one of the class themes being to pressure the idea of things like a “black aesthetic,” something Morrison promoted and that Dr. Wilcots was keen to defend. In particular, what interested us is the nature of that aesthetic: if it exists at all, is it ontological (a product of the color of the person doing the writing) or a stylistic (a product of of, say, cadence or rhythm or word choice or sentence structure, all of which operate separately from the notion of author as literal agency)?
That very question, it seems to me, relates directly to the situation being raised by A Newbie’s Guide, where we learn that from the standpoint of marketing and publishing, at least, the question has already been decided — and it has been decided, rather unsurprisingly, in favor of the essentialist, ontological position: a “black” book is one written by a black author, not one that deals in any particular way with issues of blackness.
But what is it that allows us to place a science fiction novel written by a black person into the “African American” section of bookstores? After all, we don’t shelve Philip K. Dick in a “Caucasian-American” section, nor would we think to. So why the separate treatment?
This same question arises when your pressure the idea of the black aesthetic—or any identity-politics aesthetic, for that matter –particularly when you are dealing with fiction writers, whose job it is to present characters that ring authentic in whatever the narrative context. Because just as John Updike can write convincingly as a Jewish professor, there is no reason to think that a white author couldn’t capture the “black aesthetic” if, indeed, we are talking about an “aesthetic” at all.
But therein lies the rub: for all of Morrison’s talk about the black aesthetic, what she really means to discuss is an essential blackness that somehow magically comes through the writing and sets a particular narrative presentation apart from all others on the basis, simply put, of a brand of essentialism. Which is to say, the black aesthetic is a function of carrying “black blood” and writing from that position—despite protestations to the contrary that what the black aesthetic flows from is the experience of being black. Because such experiences can be invented and mimicked by skilled writers. They can be learned, and so are completely fluid.
And really, who can in good faith promote a “black aesthetic” that, say, Philip Roth can capture.
So to answer the initial question: is it racist to divide books up this way? Well, no—because I don’t believe that there is any harm intended. But there is certainly an unseemly racialism to the whole thing that, given the way we celebrate “diversity” now, superficially, with a strong reliance on the Crayola postulate, is perfectly in keeping with the way we as a society have allowed feel-good identity politics to gain the upper hand in any fruitful society-wide thinking on race.
From the perspective of promoting individualism as a social imperative, my position is this: books written by blacks that are not “about” blackness or African-American studies belong with books written by non blacks about the same subjects. Similarly, books on African-American studies written by whites belong in the African-American studies section, if we insist on maintaining such a thing. Pragmatically, though, the desire to promote authorship through identity politics—as with the desire to appeal to identity groups for the purposes of collecting voting blocs—is economically understandable, if not socially unhelpful (or even pernicious, depending on your point of view).
For those of you interested, I’ll include below the fold my notes comparing of the construction of personal identity in Morrison’s Beloved with that in Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint, which I think might provide some concrete insights into the points I’ve been making more abstractly until now:
Morrison’s Beloved
Which brings us to Beloved, in which Morrison asserts just such a necessity or historical/cultural alignment. Her project is a cultural project. She wants, that is, to give voice to the deadâ€â€to suggest to us not only that history is still alive but, moreso, that it is materially “out there” (made spatio-temporal with the idea of “rememory”)â€â€and in so doing she creates just the kind of alternative narrative Benjamin alludes to (here, based in part on certain West African cultural traditions). As Dr. Barbara Wilcots suggested to you, Morrison was interested in giving a different “voice” to the slave history, a voice distinct from the voices “heard” in traditional narratives of slavery. In so doing, she hopes to wrest control of slave history away from those in power, those who have, before her, controlled the discourseâ€â€and so controlled what we think “really” occurred during the slavery and early post-slavery years. Black-American identity, for Morrisonâ€â€if it is to be separated from other identitiesâ€â€must necessarily have narratives of its own to align itself with. Further, those who align themselves with these narratives must necessarily believe them, and believe them to be theirs exclusively (if they are to work as discriminatory). The problem, though, is in arguing that a particular narrative is yours beyond your belief in it. Presumably, the introduction of an alternative narrative of history (here, Morrison’s reconsideration of slave history) can belong to anyone who believes it to be “true”; but such a consideration undercuts the whole project of identity the way Morrison wishes to promote it.29 And so as we’ve seen, the next (side)step in identity politics (which by now you should recognize as an extension of the way we come to believe one particular narrative over another) is to turn those narratives into experiences, to turn history into memory, or representation into enactment (through the linguistic idea of the performative). When we no longer merely believe in the particular narratives we claim to be ours, but we further insist on remembering themâ€â€we can convince ourselves that the narratives we learned to believe in are no longer learned, and so the history we believe in is likewise no longer learned. What we “remember” is akin, in our mind, to “things as they really were,” and so by turning our narratives into memories, we’ve turned representations back into “reality.” And because we believe that “our” reality is different from the “reality” experienced by others not like us, we are able to lay claim to certain narratives and to insist that these narratives we’ve laid claim to are ours and ours alone. For Morrison, being a Black-American is being able to claim certain narratives (such as the one proposed in Beloved) as your own. But you must do this through memory, because it is this belief in “remembering” rather than learning that turns mere alternative narratives back into the kind of historical “realities” (your “heritage”) which identify you as a Black-American. If reality is “things as they actually happened”â€â€and you can now remember things as they actually happened (which you can now do, because you assume that these things happened to people “like you,” and so by extension, to you)â€â€then you are finally back in touch with the “reality” that the writing down of history originally made unattainable. And whereas you might have felt uncomfortable basing your identity on just one in an infinite series of potential alternative narratives/conceivable representations (none more “true” than the next), you feel quite safe basing your identity on a particular historical “reality” that your “memory” (you’ve convinced yourself) allows you to claim as your own.
Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint
In Portnoy’s Complaint, we begin to understand the anxieties produced by these “cultural” memories when they’re not yours simply because you choose to believe them, but because you are a member of a group whose identity depends upon a belief in them. Portnoy undergoes the same kind of identity crisis as, say, Morrison underwent before she wrestled slave history away from the oppressive representations of that history she locates with Eurocentric historians and literary critics. Morrison’s desire to create an alternative narrative was for her a desire to escape from a particular identity she felt was being imposed upon her by Eurocentric “history.” Portnoy’s complaint in this respect is precisely the complaint Morrison leveled against the dominant discourse she grew up under. But interestingly, Portnoy doesn’t wish to escape the discourse of society; rather, he wishes to escape a particular cultural discourse of the kind Morrison creates and/or promotes. That is, Portnoy feels oppressed by the very alternative narrative that the Jewish culture constructed to give itself its identity. Portnoy doesn’t realize that what he is rebelling against is simply an “alternative narrative” of history, however, because what gives an alternative narrative its power is precisely our disinclination to see it as an alternative narrative. Rather, we are instructed to remember it (as is Portnoy), which means we must think of it as having actually happened in the particular way we are told to remember it. This is what, in our minds, makes the narrative “real” or “true.” And so in trying to establish his own identity, Portnoy is forced to grapple with the identity bequeathed him as a result of his heritageâ€â€while at the same time trying to create for himself yet another alternative narrative, this time based on actual experiences (actual memories) and not on the experiences he is told he must but yet can’t remember.
*****
29 Interestingly, the very “fact” of Morrison’s novel allows for dissemination of her narrativeâ€â€which is at once what enables her to promote her narrative as an alternative narrative of history while simultaneously undercutting it as a narrative which allows for cultural exclusion. Once you read Morrison’s narrative it is yours (provided you believe it)â€â€and it no longer matters whether you are black or white or red or yellow. In fact, the only way to promote this alternative narrative as belonging to a particular group (to the exclusion of other groups or individuals) is through an appeal to essentialism. Here is the question: if I (as a white male) have read Morrison’s narrative, and I subsequently believe it to be more “true” than other narratives of slave history, is this narrative less “mine” than, say, that of a black woman who has yet to read it?
****
update: Jill at Feministe weighs in, as does Gail Hapke at Scribal Terror.
I saw an Eminem video on BET once.
Morgan Freedman was once asked in an interview about his perception of today’s racial climate. His response was something like, “We’d all do well not to talk about it so much.â€Â
Do the Brits have these problems with racial identity? Perhaps I’m starry eyed, but while I was there, I didn’t feel the black/white tension. They don’t seem to have the race/poverty pimps pushing the issue 24/7.
I think racial identification is retarded. Perhaps it’s marketing studies that point to these defined separations? Should I start calling myself an Appalachian American?
for reasons having to do with Tom Maguire’s Challenge to Daou – shown here:
I, as some unknown commentor on Protein Wisdom, submit the following as an example of Cult Relabeling.
.
I’ve never read Morrison, but I did read Roth’s Portnoy.
But only for the sex parts.
Same with Nabokov’s Lolita. A disappointment. Not much sex there.
Pedophile.
Re: Roth Well read. And your footnote Morrison question is answered there. But you know that.
Re: author-identity categorization A practical observation: The mid-’90s ghetto-shelving project was the last straw; I don’t go to bookstores anymore. I’m their supposed ideal customer (not really, but supposedly), and it’s still too muchâ€â€hide-and-seeking Samuel Delany from the sci-fi to the black to the gay aisles, finding Dennis Cooper and Kathy Acker disappeared into the gay lit stack when Burroughs and Frank O’Hara weren’t (why?), wondering where the “queer theory” in Foucault and Klossowski is that got them marched out of Philosophy and into that cell, etc.
I can’t find shit, and bookstore employees are too busy posing for imaginary Hot Topic and Free Trade Coffee ads to point the way. Bookstores are hangouts, not stores, I know, but still, I’d like to be able to buy the books. They’re lifestyle-affirmation symbols, client-discrimination bait, but I want to take it. Can’t. Too much work.
Meanwhile at Amazon, you can type in authors’ names and get their books without knowing their ethno-genital biographies. Refreshingly liberal.
… and sometimes sales tax-free.
Pretentious claptrap Boz…
A question that no one’s asked yet: Are these questionable books crowding out other books with more genuine African-American literature bona fides, or are they being shelved there because of a dearth of new genuine material and a desire to keep the African-American sections well-stocked in spite of that?
My guess is that this phenomenon may have more to do with keeping the African-American shelves full – thus justifying the section’s continued existence and avoiding the charges of racism that are bound to arise from either keeping a half-empty African-American section or getting rid of the section altogether – than with anyone’s misguided notion of a book’s “blackness”.
Damn, Jeff. That is a perfect carpet bombing of the whole identity politics theme. Crayola Postulate sums it up, and, riffing on Joshua’s comment, I suspect that good science fiction books written by black authors are missed by their intended audience because they are languishing among books on African studies, Toni Morrison and Shaq.
I read this kind of stuff and I wonder whether this also applies to straight women writing about gay men (think Patricia Nell Warren) or for that matter straight men writing about gay women or even writing about women at all. At some point we have to say someone gets it or they don’t. Doesn’t matter whether they are white, black, red, green or blue, gay or straight, women or men. If you can visualize the life of the character and write it so that people who live that life can believe it, then you have succeeded. You should categorize fiction by whether it is successful in its characterization or it is not.
I wonder sometimes about writers like Tennessee Williams. Did he truly capture the mind and soul of the tortured women he wrote about? Is there someone who can tell us whether he did? How about men writing about the inner thoughts of women or vice versa. How many actually get the true picture.
If people like Toni Morrison were writing a sociological study of blacks living under slavery, then I would be more inclined to believe in separating out what she had to say. When it comes to writing fiction, just either be good or not good. The rest is just persiflage.
Octavia Butler thanks you, Jeff.
Beloved was the most pretentious bore I’ve ever dragged myself through. The movie was even worse. Basically anything that’s considered literature, classic or otherwise, I’ve learned to avoid like the plague. Want to write a “great” work? First, eschew plot and excitement, then proceed to give your characters bizarre metaphorical names, write like your a zen buddhist, and pray you’re a minority. That will increase the quality of your reviews and damn near guarantee you an award of some kind.
This is irritating for me as a graduate from an English department. I see the use in classifying an African-American studies section of the bookstore, i.e. non-fiction, but to classify Morrison, the example at hand, as a black author instead of a fiction author is, well, dumb.
If someone seeks to read or write on black fiction in particular, that person can cruise on over to the fiction section and find it their damned selves. Anything else is lazy and counterintuitive to fiction as art, even if part of that art’s fuction is social commentary.
So in other words…
…this is right on.
[Coincidentally my captcha word is “indeed,” so I should have just shortened this comment to a Reynolds-approved “heh”.]
SRL, I loved Beloved as a novel, but could have entirely done without it as a movie. I tortured myself with it a few weeks ago and really want my two hours of jaw-clenching back for something better. Like “License to Drive.”
After all, we don’t shelve Philip K. Dick in a “Caucasian-American†section, nor would we think to.
Make that ‘Paranoid-Caucasian-American” and you’d reach the epitomy of literary identity politics.
Jeff,
How do the essentialists deal with a narrative like Beowulf. It’s a complete narrative in and of itself, but because it lacks an authorial identity, does it then become an incomplete one?
Do they view the narrative as incomplete because we don’t know who the author was?
Seems an awfully stilted way to interpret fiction. Sure the author’s identity adds background to a story and gives areas of discussion about the author relating to his/her work. But the work itself still should have the ability to stand on its own if need be.
Lauren, I happen to like the Coreys, and License to Drive in particular. The book was horrid, though. I’d rather read something better. Like The Color Purple.
Way back in my wild and impetchus yoot of the early 70’s, the SF author Joanna Russ wrote an excellent book called How to Suppress Women’s Writingin which she went through the ways in which the (mostly) male editors of the day tried to keep women out of the club (Two particularly informative chapters are entitled, “She Didn’t Write It,” and “She Wrote it (But She Shouldn’t Have”). Well worth the read if you can find a copy.
Cut now to our progressive, inclusive, diverse modern times, and women writers and writers “of color” are shoe-horned into “Women’s” sections and “African-American” niches. And it is not merely the booksellers doing this; they are merely responding to the packaging passed down from the publishers.
This is the mark of true “progressives:” that they can get oppressed minorities to ghettoize themselves and consider it an affirmative act.
Ted Dalrymple offered an excellent example of that in the case of Virago Press, an imprint launched on the assertion that there was a unique “women’s voice” in writing. Turned out that one of their heavily promoted writers with a unique “women’s voice” was a male Protestant minister.
So they pulled his book from the stores and took it out of print rather than admit their niche marketing philosophy was flawed.
Capt V —
You are confusing intentionalism with biographical criticism. Re: Beowulf, just because we don’t know who the author(s) is/are, doesn’t mean their wasn’t one (or several) That is, we assume it was intended as a narrative produced by some human agency who meant it to mean—not the accidental creation of a bunch of arbitrary scratches onto a piece of parchment by, say, seagulls.
Intentionalism has to do with the way interpretation fuctions. All it says is that for a sign to be a sign, it needs agency behind it. Everyone is an intentionalist; sadly, too few admit to it and embrace it.
Essentialism doesn’t apply here, except at the point where one begins talking about textual ontology. In the course notes linked above you can find a section on that.
Dude, still a little hacked off about that failed academic stuff?
Why? Did I say something pedantic sounding?
Because what I meant to say was COCK.
Not to be touchy or anything, but I rather dislike the phrase “weigh in.” It makes me sound fat.
I can’t speak for Beloved, having returned it to the library before finishing it, but I can safely say Samuel Delaney and Octavia Butler belong in the sf/f category, cuz that’s what they write.
Besides, we (sf/f) need those classics to balance out all the Dragonlance and whatnot—wouldn’t want Sturgeon’s Law to be increased past the 90% mark, after all
Potty mouth!
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