Erasure and the state of black writing

[By Crystal Boson] 

           Percival Everett’s Erasure functions both as a skillful meta-narrative, and as a postmodern critique on the state of Black writing.  The work is reflexive of Everett’s own experience trying to break into the writing game and with the cultural and popular Powers That Be, those who could either grease his passage into the literary imagination or leave him stagnating in obscurity.  The novel’s protagonist, Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, is often criticized for his isolation within the intellectual ivory tower, and his distance from “authentic” black writing.  He attempts to write from his personal experience and challenge the notion that black writing, or blackness in and of itself, functions as a monolith; his approach, however, is overwhelmingly ignored by publishers, peers and the public.  Books that represent the seemingly authentic black experience, ones that offer cliché and stereotype, are propelled to the top of the public imagination by celebrity book clubs and literary hype men.  In frustration, disgust, and revolt, Ellison pens a sharply satirical novel with includes a protagonist that is a disenfranchised, degraded, and dehumanized amalgamation of several other “authentically” black texts.  Of course, the public loves it.

Young Writers Need Models

Kevin Reeves is the author of s.m.i.l.e., his debut novel—a love story painted against a Chicago cityscape. Reeves received a BA from Harvard College and currently resides in Chicago, Illinois.

       Young writers need models. Early in my apprenticeship my predecessors fed me greatly. Still, I was also very eager to find work by young black male contemporaries, which I thought might be more relatable. When I discovered that Richard Wright published Native son around 32, James Baldwin Go Tell it On the Mountain around 29, James Alan McPherson Hue and Cry around 25, then winning the Pulitzer Prize around 35, and Jean Toomer Cane around 29, I thought, surely, there had to be a living young black male fiction writer whom I could turn to as a model. After a dedicated search, I found none. There were some young black male writers producing contemporary works of fiction, but their work seemed determined only to entertain. I was looking for something more, a deeper, richer perspective. Later, after a more thorough and committed search, I did find one young black male writer who seemed to have a deep respect for the art form and the urgent need to try to get life right on the page. Where were the rest? 

          

               Given post Civil Rights era progress and the fact that there were many young black male poets, I wondered, “Why is there such a lack of young black male literary fiction writers?” The decline, beginning in the early 1980s, is striking. For a time, I attributed the shortage to the way of the publishing industry, specifically the large New York publishing houses. I reasoned that during the Harlem Renaissance and the following decades the gatekeepers of the publishing world were more actively looking for more young black male voices. The socio-political climate of the times raised the demand for their perspective. Big publishing houses, and those connected to them, look for what they think is going to sell well. Writers who appear not to represent the mainstream benefit from spikes of perceived popular interest. Yet, the trends of big publishing are not responsible for the halting of young black male literary voices.

"'Thank-You' Note to American Presidents" By Jerry W. Ward

"THANK-YOU" NOTE TO AMERICAN PRESIDENTS

How beautiful

is the blood of the dead

splashed like azaleas 

on the body of Earth


You have 

made my day
                                                     
aesthetic

Jerry W. Ward, Jr.

March 29, 2011

Black Men, Education, and Political Activism

[By Kenton Rambsy]

The “100 Novels Project” provides the opportunity for scholars to make divergent connections between a broad range of authors in order to reveal a number of similarities between their works and better understand how individual black writers have the ability to distinguish their own artistic voices and also contribute to a larger chorus of voices that constitute African American literary traditions. 

As a graduate of Morehouse College, an all African American male college, I wanted to take the opportunity to survey a number of novels and focus more on the literary representations of black men and their educational pursuits across a 158-year time span of African American literature. Even though Frederick Douglass’s The Heroic Slave (1853) is considered a novella, his work sparked my interest to think more critically about the educational/intellectual character traits of primary and secondary male characters in novels—specifically, identifying connections between education and political activism.