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Tayari's Blog: Alas, Poor David

Posted by TayariJones on February 7, 2008 03:23 PM
Filed under Bookshelf

David Payne has a pretty interesting article in Oxford American about the bias against southern writers. As a southern writer, I am trying really hard to feel his pain, but I just can't. (Maud, who is a finer woman than I am, is able and makes some really compelling observations.)

I think my resistance comes from this quote:

While fine writers go neglected in other regions, too, it’s singular to find an entire generational cohort working off the radar. The sole exceptions I can think of are among African-American writers. Yet if Alice Walker and Edward P. Jones have escaped the regional box, Margaret Walker Alexander and Randall Kenan haven’t; and even Ernest Gaines, despite the heavy help of Oprah, remains less well-known than he deserves.

I agree with his point that African American southern writers are not usually thought to be "just" southern. I think it's because we are not thought to be southern at all! (And honestly, I have never heard of Randall Kenan descrined as "southern". How single-minded of Payne to think that the low-profile of Kenan's career is due to his zip code rather than the double-whammy of race and sexuality. If you want to add region, we can make it a triple, but you get the idea.)

Payne's complaint that southern writers all all thought to be racists just sort of ignores that idea that some of us are on the receiving end of that racism. It's as though, despite his nod to Kenan et al, he has forgotten we exist!

And this quote: "What the “Nigger” represents to African Americans, the Redneck is to white Southerners.." I don't even know what to say about that. Well, I know what to say, but as a southerner, I am too polite to say it.