Your Black Ain't Like Mine

This has been such a busy week for me, I have not been able to get to my blog.  At some point, I hope to pre-write my blogs and just upload whichever one is slated for the day; but at this point, blogging is just one of the spinning plates in my life.  Though these blogs may get sporadic on occasion, blogging is a creative endeavor that allows me to connect my passion for culture with my interest in demographics and market segmentation.
In fact, that is my topic for today: how writers should think about writing for the cultural marketplace.  Having worked in both radio and television, I have retained an enduring interest in marketplace dynamics, particularly as they apply to demographics.  Having an interest in the dynamics of the marketplace works very well for me as a writer, and yet, there are times when it seems that the marketplace has little impact on publishers in real life.  For example, as a black woman, I am always interested in black America, and the psychographics of black culture; or rather, how the market is segmented by income, age, regionalism, and other such cultural factors that truly impact perspective. It would seem that publishers wishing to make inroads in obtaining “ethnic” market share would take psychographics into consideration when establishing a market plan for a particular culture.  As for writers, a good writer knows that a character’s perspective and identity are the result of environmental influences — or psychographics.  Certainly, a discussion of what constitutes an environmental influence, and the relative strength of environmental influences, would be key to the author’s thought process, but we won’t take the time to examine that here.  Suffice it to say, no matter how “black” I think I am, my black may not be like your black (or what you think black should be).  My black identity is based on the cultural influences that have surrounded me from childhood.  Those influences are not all black influences.  They can be a result of any number of social, or even political factors, but they are at work on my viewpoint as a character in my so-called life.  Add generational perspective to the mix, and you’ve got all kinds of different black going on.  For example, last week, I mentioned the cultural influence of the Cosby Show on my generation.  Bill Cosby’s show influenced Americans regardless of color.  In my mind, The Cosby Show was one of the last truly iconic sitcoms on television.  It would be great to have another Cosby-type show on TV, but even if such a show did exist, it is likely that it would not have the same impact as the original.  Why?  Because there are so many entertainment choices for Millennials (the generation of young people who will be coming of age in the next five years), that no single program acts to influence a wide swath of that population.   This is what author, Chris Anderson, calls the long tail.   If the long tail can apply to “white” America, then as an identifiable segment of the market, it should also apply to black America, or Latin America, or Asian America, or Native American America, and so forth.  Besides that, any marketing professional will tell you that black America (and all the other culture Americas) are not monolithic; despite the way they are portrayed in our media.  Black American life is wide and vast and deeply layered.  From Harriet Tubman with her brave shepherding of slaves to freedom; Sojourner Truth, stumping for both equal rights and women’s rights during the 1800’s; and even Mary Grant Seacole’s heroic nursing of sailors during the British Crimean war to Jay Z, one of the wealthiest men in hip hop. Each life is equal in reflecting black life.  They are assuredly as equal as Tamarion Crackhead, who always seems to be able to get a starring role on television cop shows.   Look, any researcher worth his salt could find numerous examples of heroism, social justice, literary excellence, or any other laudable attribute, in black American life, and even rooted in African cultural tradition.  Yet, American media, including publishing, prefers to employ the old, the tired, the “us and them” standard in creating products (yes, a book is a product) for black audiences.  Is this an attempt to prove some deeply buried belief?   Wouldn’t a glance or two at the spending habits of Black America erase any doubts about the viability of the market, and the varied interests of black readers?  (Note:  The purchasing power of black Americans is estimated to reach $1.1 trillion dollars by 2012.   Book and magazine purchases are a significant portion of spending in black households.) One would think so.  One, depending upon the publishing entity, would be wrong.

Now, contrary to everything I have said heretofore, I would like to put on the hat of representative of black America for just one moment – I own hundreds of books.  In that respect, I am as black as black can be.  It should be noted, that black readership has followed an upward trajectory since publishers began targeting black readers and tailoring product offerings to black audiences.  This tailoring includes the introduction of a broader range of subject matter.  Yet, the more things change, the more they stay the same for those who refuse to get a clue.  Many writers, writing books for black America, still write in narrow channels.  What are these channels so egregious to the black reader?  Popular topics include the following:

• Teen Pregnancy
• Drug Abuse
• Drug Dealing
• Slavery
• Racism
• Physical or Emotional Abuse
• Helping white people connect to their spirituality using ancient ethnic wisdom, or voodoo
• Saving weird white kids who have no white role models, and getting in trouble for it.
• Being welcomed into a white community and making friends with white people
• Crime (evergreen in the industry)
• Being black and how to deal with such an affliction – I didn’t realize it was an affliction until someone told me it was.  Imagine my shock.

What a fun set of memes.  No wonder these books (oftentimes written by white authors) are of little interest to black readers and do not sell.  Where are the black Harry Potters?  Where are the black Frodos (or, even better, Legolases)?  Moreover, why are publishers so terrified of a black person on the cover of a book?  Don’t ya’ll know Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben have been making mucho money for their respective companies for years?  As much as it pleases you, dear author, to excise your conscience with another story about how black women get abused by their abusive alcoholic boyfriends, or how grating racism is on the black soul, I encourage you to run from those themes like you would run from a house on fire.  You will not sell books to a wide range of black America with such themes because frankly, it comes across as arrogant and preachy.  Save your sermons for church if you want me to spend my hard-earned twenty-eight dollars and ninety-five cents.
So, to repeat, there is no monolithic black culture.  Continued insistence on viewing the black reader as part of some stereotypical group is not only insulting, it is more of a reflection of the insister’s ignorance than any indication of black life.  Nevertheless, if you want guidelines, consider the following: The black reader wants the same things that the reader known as Everyman wants, i.e., a well-written story which satisfies his/her literary craving.  That story might be a mystery.  It might be romance.  It might be action-adventure.  It might be fantasy.  It might be biography.  Whatever genre the story, the one thing above all that is required is authenticity of voice.  It is the only way to capture the black reader.  Pasting a cardboard stereotype in your book and featuring a bucket load of slanged  up trash talk only marks you as a poser.  Worse, it will alienate your reader, and  make you look insensitive.
Blind Item:  One well-known author wrote a book in which a white protagonist goes into a bar full of black patrons.  This protagonist, who is female, picks a fight with a big, brawny black man.  As a reader, I was horrified by the racist assumptions inherent in the scenario.  The message was that any black man would hit a woman given provocation.  The message was that black people had no morals, and if the protagonist wanted to stir up trouble, she only needed to go to a black area of town.  It was extraordinarily insensitive.  If the writer didn’t see that, the editor should have.  If the protagonist somehow sought forgiveness for her racist views, I never knew it.  I stopped reading after that scene, the first in the book.  I also have not purchased any other of that author’s books.  The protagonist could have gone to any bar.  Alcohol and anger (the protagonist was angry) = trouble.  There was no need for racial implications in this text.
In conclusion,  let me share one final truth about the black reader.  This is a truth that does cover the entire group of readers, and it may be the only one that is stereotypical.  That truth is this:  Black readers, unlike white readers, do not only read books by authors who are black (again, research indicates that many white readers do not read multiculturally).  In my mind, it is just a reminder that black readers are much more discriminating in their literary tastes.  Not that is a truth worth thinking about.

Cooking Up Culture : Black American Cuisine

According to the U.S. Census, there are almost 40 million black Americans living in the United States. While this information is interesting, such numbers do little to educate writers about the diverse communities of people who are identified as black by the Census. I think one of the best ways to begin an exploration of a culture, is to start with food. Black American culture is diverse. Cultural traditions vary by region, and by family. That is why food is a great way to examine heritage; food reflects the influences on a region and a culture. Indeed, it must be stated that black American culture is not some monolithic structure grafted onto the backbone of every infant born with 1/8 drop of African blood. It is, for non-blacks, a perception, an assumption of truths, which is often based on a lack of knowledge. In black America, black culture means different things to different people. For some, it is a connection based on what has been done to us as a people. For others, it is a deep well, a place to go for refreshment, for renewal, for inspiration. In truth, it is all of these things and none of these things. The reality it that what we call “black culture” is a conglomerate of many peoples, many cultures, and many societies. Blackness is the very essence of global. Blackness comes in every shade, every language, every nation. Therefore, there is no standard system of black behavior–I found this out when I moved to Minnesota from the south. The social understanding of “blackness” that I brought with me was repeatedly challenged. Black culture was vastly different from what I had known in the south. I found myself guilty of believing that skin color meant commonality. It doesn’t. That is why it is important for writers crafting black characters to give that character more than “blackness.” (You would not believe the number of authors who seem to think black heritage is a character trait). If you wish to write for a black audience, flesh your characters out as fully as possible, understanding that, to people who are labeled as black by society, the word carries a multitude of different meanings and patterns of behavior. It is also important to understand that much of the “blackness” that you see on television is not authentic. It is what a primarily white industry envisions as “black.”

So, we will briefly examine the cuisines of black America; and then I will share one of the recipes from my black heritage.

Black American Cuisines

Black American Cuisines include the following: Caribbean Cuisine, Southern Cuisine, Low Country Cuisine, Creole Cuisine, various traditional Black African Cuisines, and good old American Soul Food.

Caribbean Cuisine is firmly rooted in traditional black African cookery. This style of cuisine was brought to the Americas and used in Caribbean style cooking prior to mass settlement. Modern Caribbean cuisine has mostly been influenced by three groups: Africans, Amerindians, and Asians. However, Caribbean cuisine also reflects the influence of the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the British. Signature Caribbean dishes include barbecue (an African invention), callaloo soup, coo-coo, and jerk chicken.

Southern Cuisine was highly influenced by Africans brought to the Americas as slaves. Displaced from their homeland, African cooks were forced to be creative and to use whatever foods were available to them. Signature dishes include grits, buttermilk biscuits, banana bread, pecan pie, and black-eyed peas.

The tidal plain of the Atlantic Ocean in South Carolina is called the Low Country by the area’s residents. Low Country Cuisine (also known as Gullah or Geechee cuisine) is characterized by access to abundant seafood. Low Country cuisine blends seafood and rice to make a wide variety of meals. Signature Low Country dishes include fried catfish, fried fish fingers, crab-cakes, hoppin-john, and she-crab stew.

Creole Cuisine is often confused with Cajun Cuisine. However, Cajun Cuisine receives its influences from French Canadians of Acadian heritage who settled in the Bayou region of Louisiana. Cajun cuisine takes many of its influences from African cookery, but it is not the same as Creole Cuisine. Creoles of color is a term used to describe people of mixed French, Spanish, and African ancestry in Louisiana. In any event, Creole cuisine is characterized by the addition of tomatoes and seafood. Signature dishes include crawfish etouffe, corn and crab bisque, blackened fish, and jambalaya.

Growing up in the South, I enjoyed many soul food dishes. Soul food is the term used to describe traditional and modern versions of black American cooking. Many of these dishes originated during slavery. It was customary for slaves to be given the left-over, undesirable cuts of meat from slave owners. To survive, blacks transformed these poor foods, turning them into nutrient-rich meals, which they supplemented with vegetables from their own small plot gardens. Employing creativity, and techniques brought with them from Africa (many Africans were farmers), black Americans were able to create a new cuisine. As such, black American cuisine can be examined as an actual aspect of black American culture (as can various styles of music). Many of the dishes invented by black Americans from that time period are viewed as highly desirable now; others, not so much. Signature soul food dishes include cornbread, black-eyed peas, country fried steak, greens and ham hocks, red beans, and chitterlings (you know, pig intestines).

Roots of Black American Cooking

Africa is the world’s second-largest continent. It accounts for 12% of the earth’s population. It is home to 50 countries. Geographically, Africa is divided by the Sahara Desert. Africans living above the Sahara are generally referred to as North Africans. Africans below the Sahara Desert are generally called sub-Saharan Africans. This geographical divide is also, in many ways, a cultural divide. Because sub-Saharan Africa is primarily black Africa, we will focus on the food traditions of this portion of Africa in looking at Traditional African Cuisine. Black African cuisine can also be divided regionally into East, West, and South African style cookery. Many of the dishes found in the African diet can also be seen in the black American diet. Signature African dishes include jollof rice, chicken yassa, and benne cakes.

I don’t eat as many heritage foods now as I did when growing up. Eating habits have changed dramatically over the past several years. Although I am not a vegan, I have always been interested in healthy eating. While there are many Black American dishes that could be healthy with a few changes to the traditional recipe, to me, greens just do not taste good without ham hocks. One of my favorite recipes from my heritage is sweet cornbread. My mother doesn’t like sweet cornbread. She only makes it sweet when she knows I will be eating it, so I’m not sure how authentic it is to the black experience, but sweet is the way I prefer my cornbread. It should be noted that growing up in Texas, my family had many cultural influences. We were exposed to Mexican American and German American cuisines. These are the cultural influences that shaped my food tastes, and my outlook. Mexican cuisine was served in our home more often than soul food because it was cheaper, and we were not wealthy. Anyway, here is my recipe. Let me know if you try it and like it.

Sweet Cornbread

Prep Time: 10 minutes               Cook Time: 20 Minutes                  Servings: 5 – 6

Ingredients:

1 cup cornmeal

1 cup all-purpose flour

3 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup sugar, you can substitute honey

1 tsp salt

2 eggs

2 tbsp melted butter or canola oil

2 cups buttermilk

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425 F.

2. Spray an 8-inch square baking pan with cooking spray.

3. Sift cornmeal, flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt together.

4. In medium bowl, beat eggs. Add oil and milk. Mix until blended.

5. Stir cornmeal and flour mixture into the wet mixture.

6. Pour batter into prepared pan.

7. Bake 20 minutes, or until browned on top.

8. Serve with butter and honey. Or, in true southern style, slather with butter, pour some buttermilk over it, and eat with a fork.

Cook’s Note: I have a convection oven which cooks foods much faster. Be sure to allow the batter to continue cooking if it does not seem done. The edges should pull away from the pan, slightly.

Using Cultural I.D. Characters as Theme Carriers

As a culture writer, you have access to several important tools: Cultural Constructs, Functional Constructs, and Cultural I.D. Characters to name a few.

Today, we will be looking at how you can create a cultural I.D. character as a "carrier" of your story's theme. First, let's define the term. A cultural I.D. character is a character whose identity, heritage, story action, and message blend together to support your story's theme. Amy Tan is a master at this. Because we have been examining aspects of Chinese culture, let's look at how Amy Tan created a cultural I.D. character to carry the story theme in The Bonesetter's Daughter.

The BoneSetter's Daughter

In the story, Precious Auntie carries important family secrets, but she is voiceless, unable to share her secrets with her daughter, LuLing. LuLing grows up and, like her mother, she is also unable to speak. Eventually, there comes a time in LuLing's life when she wants to share her secrets with her own daughter, Ruth. Yet, LuLing is trapped in her voiceless state by a new enemy, Alzheimer's. The Bonesetter's Daughter is an incredibly layered story. It brims with nuance, and is a wonderful example of cultural constructs, functional constructs, and the use of culture touchstones. Let's break it down into components.

The Bonesetter's Daughter

Possible Shadow Belief: It is important to share family history.

Cultural I.D. Character: Ruth, a young Chinese American woman, is raised in a Bohemian fashion, having elements of both Chinese and WASP culture in her upbringing. She works to distance herself from her Chinese heritage in an act of rebellion against her mother's ghost-chased past and generational voicelessness (which she does not even realize is generational).

Cultural Construct: The Bonesetter's Daughter spans three generations. The story shows the changes in culture that take places as a result. Historically, the Chinese family structure was based on ideals set down by Confucius. Confucius identified Five Family Relationships: Subject/ Ruler, Father/Son, Older
Brother/Younger Brother, Husband/Wife, and Friend/Friend. These relationships were, of course, patriarchal. According to Confucius, raising daughters was like raising another family's child because the daughter would eventually leave and move in with her husband's family. There, she had no power unless she bore a son. If a wife did not bear a son, her husband could bring another woman, or many women, into the household. Many changes occurred in family structures during the Communist Revolution. We won't go into them here. Tan does show both of these cultural aspects in the story. For our purposes in observing how she used cultural constructs in the story, we have to look at what the author implies. In my mind, it is this: Women were powerless in Chinese culture unless they bore a son. Precious Auntie is not only voiceless. She is powerless. Her silence and lack of power are enforced by the culture of the time. Brilliantly, Tan incorporates the traits as generational legacies, thereby transforming something that is historical social culture, into a female legacy within that family.

Functional Construct: An accident prevents Precious Auntie from sharing her family story. Alzheimer's disease prevents LuLing from speaking. Ruth must break free of the external "cultural" barriers and learn to speak.

Theme: In the end, Ruth comes to understand the betrayal that led to her mother's voicelessness. She realizes that she, too, is voiceless. Tan then deploys culture as a plot device to bridge the divide between mother and daughter. In the end, not only are we convinced that Ruth must speak, but we, as readers, know that we too, must speak our truths. Moreover, we must share our stories, our secrets, and our legacies with those in our lives who are bound by them; not in a way that will hobble them, but in a way that will free them from the pain of the past.

In conclusion, the Culture I.D. Character can be used to convey complex, difficult themes. They are stand-ins for the reader, allowing the reader to experience the emotional highs and lows of story truth in a more profound way. Obviously, everyone cannot be Amy Tan, but for the culture writer, she is a must-read author. Her handling of culture, her understanding of how to deliver culture messages, and her ability to use nuance mark her as a writer whose techniques are well worth studying.