Steven Barnes: Not really. I don't consider myself political. Others do, but that's their business. I do try to make philosophical statements, to motivate people to question the basic premises by which they live their lives, and to live their lives in spiritual, intellectual, and physical balance. If you have the kind of balance I'm talking about, you are free-the system cannot own you. In Lion's Blood, I am certainly inviting people to question what they think they know about race, culture, and slavery.
Maryann Reid: Not usually. My writing is light, fun and entertaining. I believe there are too many "serious" books out there that try to tell people what to do, think, and feel. Even fiction books tend to border on the line of self-help or even revolution. I like to get any message I have across in a more subdued manner. Where the reader will find themselves smiling and thinking at the same time.
Myles Pinkney and Sandra Pinkney: Not necessarily, but we do want blacks to recognize who they are.
Afi Scruggs: I don't think my writing is overtly political; you won't find any screeds or long discourses. The politics shows in my topics and the questions I explore. I think, for example, the discussion of slavery in my memoir, Claiming Kin: Confronting the History of an African American Family was extremely political. I struggled with the notion of my ancestors as commodities, and how I felt about their condition.
Alexs Pate: Writing is inherently political. From the very beginning, slaves like Lucy Terry and Phyliss Wheatley and others proved that black people were human beings by revealing the complexity of thought that is rendered in their work. When writers claim not to be political, to me, it is a complete misunderstanding of the process. To claim an absence of political intent is indeed a political statement. It is either a deflection of the truth of a statement of privilege. Every book I've written, from Losing AbsaloM to Amistad to Finding Makeba to my latest West of Rehoboth, is deeply political. The characters I create, the settings I choose, as well as the details and outcomes are wrought from a political consciousness. I focus much of my work on the lives of African-American men, particular their interior lives. Simply trying to humanize the otherwise stereotyped and flatten.
Jabari Asim: Sure. My essay in Not Guilty, "Black Man Standing," is very much a political statement. I've found that the essay form best suits any political impulses I may be harboring, and that my fiction is least amenable to such inclinations. I have written some poems that I think succeed at making political statements, particularly tributes I've written to political figures such as Harold Washington and Medgar Evers.
Marissa Monteilh: Thus far, my writing makes statements that are more about personal growth than statements that are political. Perhaps in the future it will be necessary for me to make political statements, depending on the crux of each story. But for now I strive to create characters that seek healthy, authentic power, even if they do not ultimately achieve their goals.
Francis Ray: No, I don't try to make political statements with my writing. I do touch on current social issues that cut across racial lines. In my last book, The Turning Point, the heroine is a victim of domestic violence. Rather than focusing on the abuse, the thrust of the story is the metamorphous of the heroine's character from a weak, frightened woman into one of courage and independence.
Mat Johnson: There’s very little you can do as a writer without making some form of political statement, like it or not. As a subject matter for writing, I don’t care to write about white racism. It’s boring, it’s what’s expected, and it’s done over and over. So even not doing something ends up a political statement in itself.
Black America’s been in defense mode for so long we’ve created lists of things you can’t talk about, question or criticize in public. As I writer, I feel I have a responsibility to truth, not propaganda. As a writer, I love it, there is so much to challenge, that needs challenging, and sacred cows make great burgers.
Michael Datcher: The greatest political statement any writer can make is to live the life that they put between the parallel lines. My most recent political statement, in this current climate of flag waving, is that the same flag flew over the courthouse which gave the world the hypocrisy of "separate but equal." The same flag flew over the courthouse in Simi Valley, that found four police officers not guilty, after they had beat him like a runaway slave before an international audience.
Kim McLarin: There's nothing wrong with infusing politics into fiction, as long as the fiction is good. But, no, I don't set out to make political statements in my work. I seek to explore the human condition, to examine why we human beings think and act and feel the ways we do. If in exploring that condition I stumble across something "political" so be it.
Michele Andrea Bowen: I do not intentionally write books that are a political statement. But since politics permeates our lives, political issues are bound to surface in a good story. I write about black church life, it is full of politics, and Church Folk definitely dealt with black church politics.
William Jelani Cobb: I think politics can be defined in a lot of different ways. I certainly don't avoid politics because I think it's a central arena of human interaction, but I also think didacticism is anathema to good writing. I'm mainly an essayist and there is a long tradition of overtly political writing in this country that goes all the way back to "Common Sense." I've also written about things that don't seem to "political" on the surface, but definitely have those kinds implications. A few years ago, I wrote a profile of a young fighter who had used boxing to help turn around his life. Then, about 18 months later, he was killed in the ring. On the surface this is just a faceless sports tragedy, but on another level I could ask how exactly spectator violence became his best chance to earn a decent living. Or why the sport that has been historically populated by whatever group occupies the low rung in society is also the most corrupt, dangerous and unregulated.
Kayla Perrin: Yes I do, to a degree. In my novel, Everlasting Love, my hero is a wealthy, African-American architect. While he's driving his sporty car, I have him being pulled over by a cop. The only reason he's pulled over is because of racial profiling.
Virginia DeBerry and Donna Grant: Our messages are not specifically political. We do, however, try to highlight opportunities for and instances of personal growth and responsibility.
Tonya Bolden: I do not try to make political statements in my work. I am more a teacher than a pundit. I strive to tell a good story and impart useful, enlightening, inspiring information. Of course, everything a person does is political to some extent-a writer's work reflects her ideology, her philosophy about life. It's reflected in the subject chosen and the language used to explore the subject. In a way, my being a writer is in itself a political statement. As I descend from people who were enslaved and then Jim Crowed-from people whom society historically deemed "beasts of burdens," devoid of imagination, curiosity, and intellectual acuity-the fact that I'm a writer blasts the lie of black inferiority (other than in music and sports). Not that I go about trying to prove my people are not inferior-fool's errand that: you know, "you can't prove a negative."
Natasha Tarpley: I can't say that I try to make explicit political statements in my work. What I do try to do is to write about various aspects of African American life, some of which are political, such as dealing with racism and discrimination, from an internal perspective, in that the character's experiences, feelings, point of view are primary, and not "the issue." Too often I feel that African American stories get compressed in such a way that a specific event or issue becomes the focus, and the people themselves are merely vehicles to help get a particular point across.
I try to tell stories that celebrate the humanity and complexity of African American people and communities. For example, my most recent picture book, Joe-Joe's First Flight, which will be published by Knopf in 2003, is about a group of African American men who want to learn to fly a plane in the 1920s, a time when African Americans were not issued pilot's licenses as a result of racial discrimination. The story centers around one of the men's sons, a little boy who has a very realistic dream about taking up one of the planes and flying all around the town. So, this is a story in which the issue of racism plays an important role, but it is transmitted through the larger story about a boy and his father and the realization of a dream. This is what I mean when I say I try to make the people primary. I think this is also an effective way of exploring political issues, because it forces readers to identify with the characters as human beings first, and once you identify with someone on this level, you are better able to empathize with their plight.
Phyllis Y. Harris: Good books are written to deal with something inside of you. An inherent process of dealing with something inside of you is arriving at an understanding through personal experience, what it means to feel sorrow, joy, pain, loss, laughter, love, hope, all things that any oppressed people who want a revolution experience. Therefore, I believe politicians should make political statements. Writers can and do choose to make political statements that influence how various movements are perceived. But in my world, writers write from a sheer joy of the love of it, with the hope that somewhere, someone will want to read it, and then find something of themselves or an experience they've had within it.
Monique Morris: I do try to make political statements with my writing. For example, in my novel, Too Beautiful for Words, the book is filled with social commentary about the Black Panther Party, capitalism, and what's wrong with the current fixation much of hip-hop America has with being a "pimp" or a "player." There are other, more subtle things, like comments about complexion or education, but I try to keep it as reality-based as possible. And politics are a REALITY in the Black community.
Raymond A. Winbush: It is impossible to be an African in America without being political. The denial of this can be seen in the writings of Africans in America such as Shelby Steele, Thomas Sowell and others. My book The Warrior Method: A Program for Rearing Healthy Black Boys "is" a political statement, as well as the current book I am editing on Reparations for Africans in America. I cannot separate my experience from my writing. They are one and as such, my politics are intertwined with all of that. For example, I think that "all" Black parents must teach his/her/their child to deal with police brutality at the earliest possible age. I think that such education politicizes the Black child at an early age and will help him/her survive in a white supremacist society.
