Brothers on a Soapbox.

Who's Listening?

In a world of popular commercial "fiction," how many readers are there for "nonfiction," essays, personal narrative and memoirs by African American male authors? Enough to recognize these authors are not all the same or doing or trying to do the same thing? I have been asked to pick some of them out--call them "brothers on a soapbox" and possibly answer this question: "Who's listening to them ?"

It seems to me that most of them are doing what they are compelled to do, which is to write. To sell is another matter entirely. It has been said that when selling becomes more important than writing, then you're in trouble. Sincere writing is not decision so much as compulsion. Notice we did not say beautiful writing, or good writing, or even readable writing. We said sincere writing. Notice quotation marks around "nonfiction." Why is that? Because the best "fiction" is based on real people and events; "nonfiction" is removed from pure reality by an author's perceptions and prejudices. The best "nonfiction" moves you just like "fiction"; the best "fiction" feels like fact. The poem your child wrote for Mother's Day or Father's Day, calling you the world's best parent? That's sincere. That's "nonfiction." Claims of "nonfiction" and categories of books (and people) are not to be trusted, and to unsuspecting readers, neither are these "brothers." Well, they may all seem to look (or read) alike, street-corner or office-suite philosophers haranguing us, telling us what we already know, lecturing us on our excesses, telling us how a game is run while running a game themselves. It does make me want to holler, the way they do our reputations as readers and our books as writers. Publishers categorize you before they read you. Publishers tend not to think of you as appreciating a well-turned phrase or a humorous and truthful passage or an emotional string plucked so it will reverberate just so. You as readers are said not to constitute much market in the first place. If you want to hide something from black people, put it in a book and label it "nonfiction." We'd all rather it be more positive, like an Easter Egg hunt. (Over here! Found six! The Death of Rhythm and Blues by Nelson George, The All-American Skin Game by Stanley Crouch, Faces at the Bottom of the Well by Derrick Bell, On The Real Side by Mel Watkins, Makes Me Wanna Holler by Nathan McCall, and The Color of Water by James McBride.)

If it follows that black male writers of essays, personal narratives, and memoirs would be best appreciated and supported by black male readers, and since black men in every American's mind have acquired the reputation for not being able to do anything right--then school's really out for these authors. Not only could the "brothers" not possibly be able to structure and compose good narrative, but guess who has the reputation for reading less than anybody? There are historical reverberations and environmental hazards that led to this, but it is still a fact--if there are 10 million African American readers, 9.9 million are women. So one decent Iyanla Vanzant buries the whole lot of black male essayists, commercially speaking. In order to do well commercially as a black male "nonfiction" author, you must tap into alternative markets while still utilizing your core competencies. Mr. McBride makes no bones of the fact that the reason his book became a bestseller was because it was mainly bought by white people, in particular, white women, specifically Jewish women. His focus in his memoir was his mother, a Jewish woman. His book is one of few "nonfiction" efforts that is a commercial success. Normally it's Iyanla's show--not so much about a book as about a feeling. Not to mention "fiction" authors like Terry and BeBe. You know them by first names only. If I say "Michael" you think of Jordan. Does that mean Michael Eric Dyson should not write a collection of essays like I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr. (2000) if he feels up to it and can get it into print? Who should stop? Should Ishmael Reed stop, or should Earl Ofari Hutchinson stop? Should either one stop? Should Tavis Smiley stop, or should Cornel West stop? Who decides? Some of the "brothers" are performing a public service, advocating, agitating, expanding theme. They have every other sort of human motivation there might be to write a book. Who should stop? Should Thomas Sowell, John Wideman, William Julius Wilson, Arnold Rampersad, Shelby Steele, Gerald Early, Anthony Walton, or Henry Louis Gates, Jr. stop? Should university-based authors stop? No, of course not. Sometimes they should be edited. Or challenged. Or critiqued. Or heard. Or enjoyed. But they shouldn't stop. David Bradley, novelist and author of The Chaneysville Incident--should he stop writing essays, though his The Bondage Hypothesis: Meditations on Race, History and America is bound to intrigue once it is released? Should the journalism-based authors stop? Should Ellis Cose stop? Keith Richburg? Clarence Page? Eugene Robinson? Brent Staples? What about Kevin Powell? Robin D.G. Kelley? James Alan McPherson? Greg Tate? Blair Walker? Haki Madhubuti? Mark Mathabane? Dennis Kimbro? What about Albert Murray? They defy category, and yes, a few of them write passable prose, while some of them write prose like the peace of God in that it passeth all understanding. Regardless of abilities, each would take it personally if told he should stop just because more folks buy E. Lynn Harris. And the ones who don't stop--they are the most sincere.

Here is an interesting fact: Each of the above-named, wildly disparate authors, and many more, has written at least one readable "nonfiction" book published in the last 10 years.

Some wrote more than one. Murray writes as many as he wants. His Blue Devils of Nada (1998) and South To A Very Old Place (1971) along with his friend Ralph Ellison's Shadow and Act (1974) are good examples of personal narrative or critical personal essays. You think James Baldwin isn't a writer of personal narrative and essays because he's dead? His prose is not dead, and one need not peruse his "fiction" to realize this. In the essay "The Creative Process" (The Price of the Ticket, p.316) a reader can see what fine execution of the form can accomplish.

"Nonfiction" can't surpass great "fiction" in ability to captivate, but this rule was made to be broken occasionally; there's not that much great "fiction" out there waiting to be surpassed in the first place. A book contract does not make one write a good book. You'd think sooner or later a "brother" will stumble upon a "nonfiction" gem that's also a commercial success like Angela's Ashes or Tuesdays With Morrie. Hasn't happened lately. Not all "brothers on a soapbox" are Baldwin, Ellison or Murray. But "fiction" authors don't always put good prose in their books either. Ideas are important--subject matter, the stories an author tries to tell, the information they try to disseminate, the feelings they try to convey--but they are trying at an unprecedented rate on this continent and still getting an occasional chance to capture lightning or beauty in a book while promising to make publishers short money. This is stunning when you consider we don't live in a world that celebrates black people's inner beauty or personal growth. We live in a world where we are used for profit, then titillation, then abandoned to develop monstrous insecurities concerning profiteering and abandonment, where it is important to first discuss variations of how a woman can get or keep a man, or vice versa, usually involving money and its lack thereof. This isn't bad to discuss. It can be the stuff of good fiction. But all the time? And so, to composers of "nonfiction": Who's listening? Maybe nobody. Maybe history.

In one case--mine--history will not record much, so I will do it myself, having been given the opportunity by an otherwise intelligent publication. Each above-named "nonfiction" author has a story unlike mine, but similar somehow. For me the soapboxes in question are Why Black People Tend to Shout (1991), What Black People Should Do Now (1993), and Dark Witness (1996). If you hear Why Black People Tend to Shout, and you don't laugh--then you need to read that book. If you ask out of sincere curiosity, "Yes, why do black people tend to shout," or swell up and yell, "Black people don't tend to shout, m--f--!"--then you need to read that book. It was intended to ridicule stereotypes and laugh at the tendency of America to expect miracles from black people while begrudging them credit when they actually perform them. I wanted to make readers laugh, for it has been said that against the power of laughter nothing can stand--although I didn't think I could make people laugh at racism enough to knock it down long, and I was right. But I insisted to publishers the market was there. Thirty-four disagreed. The thirty-fifth, Birch Lane Press, gambled. It was not the biggest publisher. That's when you get in, when someone takes a risk. Made them money.

This last fact was the only reason What Black People Should Do Now was published by a different publisher. That book missed my creative target. The title was too fine; too easy to take it literally, so nearly everyone did, thinking I was offering up unwanted advice. A character in the opening "fictional" chapter said it: "What black people should do now is stop paying attention to people who say they know what black people should do now." An astute (and black) male reviewer in Chicago asked why I didn't keep the characters from the opening chapter and turn it into a novel? And he may have had a point there, only even the word "novel" tends to gives me the piles.

Dark Witness, the next book, is "nonfiction" personal narrative. Each chapter is structured on a Mark Twain story or essay. Dark Witness is also intended as response to The Bell Curve, a "nonfiction" book belittling black intelligence. Some didn't care who it belittled, as some German Jews in the `30s didn't care who Hitler belittled; some wrote "nonfiction" to respond. As an example, the first chapter in Dark Witness is "Why Black People Are So Stupid." If you think it attempts to explain why black people are supposed to be stupid--you need to read that book. If you can find it. As a woman wise to the ways of the publishing world once told me, "the people in publishing aren't going to publish you so you can tell them about their stuff." Only she didn't say "stuff."

Serenity (1989) is also a "nonfiction" book. It is a "memoir." I am also guilty of that one. It was my first offense. Serenity is a memoir about boxing, but also a few other things. The New York Times used T.S. Eliot's line about plot to explain boxing in Serenity: "The meat the burglar brings to distract the watchdog." Despite this, Serenity sank Titanic-like and went out of print. The three books that followed have never been out of print. And yet I once got a letter from an ex-amateur boxer who had been paralyzed in a motorcycle accident. Long nights in ICU, woman left him, dog died, endless rehab for the return of being able to shrug a shoulder, self-loathing, suicidal moods, the whole nine yards. He wrote to say Serenity moved him, uplifted him through an uncertain life, gave him strength to rediscover the beauty and function of his. Sounds like "fiction," eh? But it's "nonfiction." What is just a simple vignette from an obscure book to one reader may be just what the doctor ordered for the next. Who's listening? Well, it depends on which writer, or reader, and which book. You never know where Lightning-That-Jumps-Off-The-Page is going to strike. Never underestimate sincerity, or any sincere author with an ability to write, and get into print.

Listen up!

Black men speak their minds

Class Notes: Posing as politics and Other Thoughts on the American Scene

by Adolph Reed The New Press, April 2000, $25.00, ISBN 1-565-84482-3

Readers can't help but get caught up in the freshly honest windstorm as the professor and Village Voice columnist charges full steam ahead of the classical liberal (even radical!) agenda with a bold look at the American landscape through eyes which have wearied of the outdated, overwrought rhetoric of the old left. Top of the class!

Dispatches from The Ebony Tower: Intellectuals Confront the African American Experience

Edited by Manning Marable Columbia University Press, March 2000, $27.50 ISBN 0-231-11476-1

The Talented Tenth appears resurrected in this impressive collection of essays by leading black intellectuals. A wide array of academics and contemporary thinkers astutely addresses issues of African American life from the classroom to the street.

The Disappearance of Black Leadership

by Earl Ofari Hutchinson, PhD. Middle Passage Press, Inc., Spring 2000, $11.95, ISBN 1-881-03216-7

This is his ninth book dealing with the African experience in America and Hutchinson continues to wear the soapbox like the cloak of a superhero. Here Hutchinson takes himself, the black community-at-large and the contemporary leaders who grew out of the civil rights movement to task for the lack of sound leadership and political structure by and for African Americans.

24 Reasons Why African Americans Suffer

by Jimmy Dumas African American Images, $12.95, ISBN 0-913-54363-2

An ambitious look at how a plethora of important social issues effect the overall development of African Americans today. Dumas also approaches controversial issues concerning homosexuality, interracial marriage and spirituality. This is a must read for anyone concerned about race relations and the state of Black people in America.

Can Black Mothers Raise Our Sons?

by Lawson Bush, V, African American Images, $14.95, ISBN 0-9135-4364-0

A bold look at what many in the African American community would rather not discuss the absence of Black men from too many of the households where their children are reared. A wide variety of parenting styles and family dynamics are presented, as well as interviews with mothers and their sons to provide an in-depth view of the subject.

Ralph Wiley co-authored, with Spike Lee, By Any Means Necessary: The Trials and Tribulations of the Making of Malcolm X, which was awarded the 1993 NAACP Image Award for Literature. Mr. Wiley's "Brothers on a Soapbox," our cover feature on who's writing what-and just who should be reading it--can be found on page 46.