End of the year thoughts

The last day of the year always seems to come so darn fast. But it's here and I'm here (thank god!) so I'll embrace it.

What I've learned this year about myself is this:

I love living alone.
There's only so much "ish" I can take ..and that's not much at all.
I need to take my vitamins EVERY DAY!
I work best under pressure
I'm changing life

What I've learned this year about the world is this:

People can put their differences aside and come together to bring about change ( Go Obama!)
What goes around come around! ( Go Obama!)
It's smaller than we think
It's precious
It's beautiful

What I've accomplished this year is this:

A broader sense of my spiritual self
Finished my novel Lover Man under the pen name Geneva Holliday
Finished my novel Glee under a yet to be determined pen name
Started writing the stage play for The Warmest December
Bought a second home
Read about twenty or so novels.
Bid a final farewell to a "complicated" relationship
Took my first spiritual bath


What I hope for 2009:

Love, laughter, health, serenity, travel and oh yeah....a book deal


Happy New Year Ya'll!

Bernice L. McFadden

Old Skool Reads....

On The Welcome White Folk Blog, Carleen Brice listed a number of books written by AA writers that will be published in 2009. I thought I'd flip the script and list a few old skool reads that I love.

Let The Lion Eat Straw "Ellease Southerland's short, bittersweet gem of a novel was originally published in 1979. It arrived during the age of the ascendant black woman writer, an epochal shift in the world of African-American letters launched in 1970 by Maya Angelou's classic autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
Let the Lion Eat Straw appeared two years after Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and three years before Alice Walker's The Color Purple, perhaps the most accomplished and best-known novels of the period, and its enthusiastic critical reception suggested that it belonged in such esteemed company. The Los Angeles Times called it "a remarkable first novel." "This book is a miracle," declared the Sunday Times of London. The New Yorker, Boston Globe and Chicago Tribune were among other publications offering similar praise.

But while Morrison, Walker and others became flourishing icons of a bold new era, Southerland has lived outside the spotlight. Now known as Ebele Oseye, she lives in New York and spends summers in Nigeria, teaching, writing, occasionally publishing. For years in the United States, Let the Lion Eat Straw languished out of print. Last year, Amistad reprinted it 25 years after its first publication. When critics and readers failed to take proper notice, Amistad launched it again" - Washington Post


The Blacker The Berry, Wallace Thurman. "A source of controversy upon its 1929 publication, this novel was the first to openly address color prejudice among black Americans. The author, an active member of the Harlem Renaissance, offers insightful reflections of the era's mood and spirit in an enduringly relevant examination of racial, sexual, and cultural identity."

The 1988 American Book Award winner Tight Spaces by Kesho Scott, Cherry Muhanji & Egyirba High
"Not since Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf has there been writing by Black women that has clearly been such a potent laying-on of hands to the spirit that keeps us all keeping-on." -- Small Press Review

The Street by Ann Petry. This was Petry's debut novel. Read this to see how this short-story writer became one of the best novelist of her time.

We lost a powerful voice and a magnificent woman this year. Miriam Makeba's life story is fascinating, heartbreaking and uplifting. Makeba: My Story.



Before Toni Morrison became the Nobel Laureate, she was editor to novelist Gayl Jones. Well that was like having the key to the kingdom, now wasn't it?

Bernice L. McFadden

Lost in translation

My intention today was to write about the movie: Cadillac Records - but then I received a email which linked me to romance writer LK Hunsaker's blog entry and Cadillac Records went right out the window.

In her entry, she writes about author Lori Tharp's op-ed piece on The Root about The Obama Effect on Publishing. What LK took away from that article was that black authors were expecting some type of hand out or hand up because we now have a black president.

I re-read the piece and obviously the entire article was somehow lost in translation for LK, even though it's written in plain English.

She says: "Certain black authors are looking for an extra shove to the top of the publishing game. Why? Because we’ll soon have a black president who wrote a couple of books."

Again I had to go back to Lori's article: "People weren't talking about Barack Obama's own books, Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope.....We are imagining the different ways the incoming president might inspire the overwhelmingly white publishing industry to get a clue about our stories. Obama has proved, after all, that readers of all races and backgrounds can take to non-mainstream literary portraits of the American experience.

You see? Lost in translation.

She talks about white guilt. I don't play that game. Its not my style. And I don't know any people that do. If you have white guilt, its a personal problem, call a therapist. Stop beating yourself up about things you had no hand in.

My favorite part of her entry was the history lesson. There is a an African proverb: Don't let the giraffe tell the lion's story." Like everything else, there is an exception to every rule. Well there are usually many, many exceptions to every rule. I'll give you one of those exceptions here.

Anyway, LK informs her readers that Africans traded their own people into slavery. Yes, that is very true. But the Africans concept of slavery was very different from the European concept. Africans absorbed their captives into their tribes. Africans thought that that was what was happening to the men, women and children they turned over to the Europeans.

Another point made was that Free blacks owned black slaves - uh yeah - and whites owned white slaves.

She also feels that "white kids in inner cities try hard to act "black" so they can be "cool" and try to alleviate their guilt at being white."

Really? I don't know any white, inner city teenagers with white guilt. Hmmm, then why do the Japanese youth emulate black people? Asian guilt? LOL

Oh yeah, for the record we did not ask for an African-American section in the bookstore, they just gave it to us. It's really a double edged sword - much like Affirmative Action - you do know who benefited the most from that don't you?

Lk wants to rid the world of the word ethnic. I like ethnic. However, they can do away with the word MINORITY -- 'cause I don't know about you but ain't nothing minor about me.

And don't forget that December is National buy a black book for someone not-black month, because we black authors need a hand out, hand up, create stories that anyone of any color can read, relate to and enjoy.

Bernice L. McFadden

National Buy a Book by a Black Author and Give it to Somebody Not Black Month

Me, the black writer..

When I was nine years old I wanted to be Harold Robbins. By the time I was twelve I wanted to be Jackie Collins. I have to admit I didn't do much reading all though High School - probably because the books I would have chosen to read would have been confiscated by the nuns ( I went to a private all girls Catholic boarding school)

I can't remember when I started reading Stephen King - I suspect it was sometime during Junior High and then picked up again after I graduated High School. And then of course I discovered Ann Petry and that lead to Zora Neale Hurston, Marita Golden and finally Toni Morrison. I wanted to be all of them too.

The thing is this, I wanted to be a writer. I didn't want to be a black writer. I wanted to be a writer (PERIOD) I wanted to write stories that celebrated my blackness and stories that had nothing at all to do with my blackness. I wanted to write stories that made ALL people feel and think.

When did the marginalization begin? Can someone please tell me when "Black" people became a genre, a fad, an adjective ...when did that happen?

*BIG SIGH*

Let's make an effort to change this shall we?

Author, Carleen Brice has created a blog dedicated to bringing white folk into the lovely, multi-colored, super talented, blow you right outta your socks - world of black literature. Now i know you all have at least one white friend or non-black friend, right? Maybe he/she is not a friend, but a co-worker who loves to read and you ain't never in all of your years sitting across from said co-worker seen him/her reading a book written by a Black writer. Poor thing - she/he don't know what he/she's been missing!

Or better yet - there's that stranger on the train or the bus that you see during your daily commute to and from work - yeah that one- wouldn't that person be surprised if you gave him/her a book? Can you imagine the goofy WTF look on her/his face! PRICELESS!! And hey, that look would be worth its weight in gold for all of the use you'll get out of it when you tell the story over Cosmo's at the club, dinner with friends, family reunions..and so on.

Let's make this thing as big as Oprah's pay it forward - because that's what we're all doing - paying beautiful, tantalizing, thought-provoking literature forward to people who might not have ever considered reading me...her...him...you.........

Visit: Welcome White Folk and become part of the movement!

Bernice L. McFadden