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Black History Month Author Roundtable
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AOTW: Do you feel an obligation to create characters that are positive black role models for your readers, particularly those of you who write for younger readers?
Y. Blak Moore: Personally, I'm just trying to write good stories when I'm writing fiction stuff. If anything I create anti-role models --- someone for a young reader not to pattern their lives after.
Victor LaValle: Anyone who's ever read racist literature can tell you how terrible those devilish black characters were. I mean that they were flat, stereotypical characters. It's the exact same thing when you write angelic black characters. I'm not good all the time and neither are you, so why pretend that's the case in our stories? Get your self-esteem somewhere else.
Marcus Major: Yes, or rather, I feel a need for balance. I cannot in good conscience put a book on the market which only shows negative portrayals of A-A men or women.
Ray Shannon: I definitely feel an obligation to portray a BALANCE between negative and positive African-American characters. Weighing the scale too heavily toward one side or the other is both unrealistic, and irresponsible.
Nalo Hopkinson: Many years ago, when Whoopi Goldberg starred in Jumping Jack Flash it was the first and the last time I'd ever seen a non-conventional black woman portrayed, not only as the hero of the story, but as a technological wizard. And she gets the guy! She doesn't die nobly at the end to save his white behind! And she never, ever conforms. It was precious to me. So I feel an obligation to create more varieties of blackness (and other identities, as I've said) than the mainstream tends to portray, and to depict those characters in more rounded, less simplistic ways than the mainstream would have us see ourselves. I don't have much faith in easy positives and negatives, but I do have a lot of faith in complexity.
Harriette Cole: I write nonfiction, so I don't exactly create characters. The stories and anecdotes that I include throughout my writing are included strategically to illustrate particular points. My intention is to share the Truth about a topic. In that intention is also the goal of celebrating the highest in who we are and how we live. So, yes, I choose to point out people who have struggled and won victories in their lives. I also reveal stories of people who made choices that did not support their lives. I believe that younger readers especially need to see that the world will treat you better if you treat yourself well, that it is essential for each of us to take responsibility for our thoughts, words and actions. Then, and only then, can we have the ability to participate in the governing of our lives. Painting a rosy picture for younger people when it's inaccurate can be dangerously misleading. I am certain that it is important to share the Truth.
Benilde Little: I feel an obligation to create characters who are true-who ring true as humans.
Nikki Giovanni: I am not a believer that the race should "put its best foot forward." The people who dislike, if not hate, us will continue in that vein no matter what we do. I would agree with Langston Hughes' manifesto when he said "We younger writers will tell the truths. If the white folks like it we are glad; if not it doesn't matter. If (Negroes) like it we are pleased; if not that is not our problem." Truth is the most important thing.
Jenoyne Adams: More than feeling the responsibility to create characters that are positive black role models, I feel the responsibility to create characters that are redeemable. I believe that the spirit is redeemable until a person's very last breath so my characters need to have the ability to transform and some do.
Diane McKinney-Whetstone: The obligation to create characters that are positive black role models is an unfair pressure for African-American authors. The challenge should be to create well-rounded believable characters that come to life on the page, draw on the reader's empathy, and change the reader during the course of the story. I began my first novel, Tumbling, with the notion that I was going to create a "good" black man who didn't run around on his wife. As other characters emerged during the writing a certain energy was happening between the married man, Herbie, and a jazz singer, Ethel. It was if Herbie and Ethel were saying to me if you put us on the same page we will get together. Still I resisted; I was enjoying the Herbie character. But if the story was going to emerge, to percolate up from the text rather than being imposed by me, I had to get out of the way. Herbie does run around on his wife. And because of that I did the work to understand why, to fill in his many dimensions, to create a flawed character that would rise above stereotype. As a result new layers of the novel revealed themselves that would have remained unexplored. Human beings are too complex to be reduced to all good or all bad. African-American novelists should have the same freedom as white authors to explore those complexities.
Olympia Vernon: If a character wants to be positive, then he or she is so. If a character appears to have a negative attitude with a negative lifestyle, he or she is also as positive in his or her response to the attitude and the negative lifestyle as the reader. Meaning: there is a conscious order there somehow. It will not always show in the lines, but the actions. Young readers, all readers, should feel their voices rising through a character, rising up from the page. Obligated. No. Not obligated. Adding to the world is no obligation, but a gift left out upon the earth to be opened and explored.
Stanice Anderson: So far, I have published only nonfiction books based on my life experiences.
Stephanie Perry Moore: Yes!
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