By Dr. Maxine Thompson
It is no secret that the economy has affected the sales of African American books. (See Publisher’s Weekly. http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6711430.html)
Even so, there are those of us who hunger for good Black literature.
A while back, I read a report stating that, as African Americans, we are the only people in the world that other countries and nationalities like to imitate—from our fashion, to our speech, to our music, to our sports, and now, even to our literature.
My question is this. Why shouldn’t we own where we dominate? Why shouldn’t we own our own sport teams? Our own Black films, to name a few?
Which brings me to this point. Why is it that we don’t own the black book industry now that we’re making inroads? Is it because we don’t have enough publishers? Literary agents? And why are we allowing other cultures to determine the image of what we send out to the world in our literature? Continue reading
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