Tayari's Blog: This is "Classic"

Comment #1, by Ladylee

You know, I think he's just fed up with it all. Sure, he could make big money, but he'd be compromising his integrity. Who wants that?

This is my issue with urban lit: there HAS to be more to urban lit than strippers, gangsters, and drug dealers. I mean, this is not my reality, and these are not the type of people I converse with everyday. I can't relate to them. Most of the people I know can't even relate to them.

I for one would like to see some of these "street authors" take classes, learn correct grammar, learn how to self-edit, SOMETHING. I've only read a few of these novels, and the ones I have read are riddled with errors.

I feel I as a reader deserve far more respect than that.

And I feel it does come down to money. All about the money, T!!

Comment #2, by Honoree

Well, now, it's a little late for Mr. Tyree to be getting upset; he started this thing and now we're all living with it--and I don't think I'm speaking too harshly when I saw we're all embarrassed by it, too. I'm talking about black writers here.

But I'm trying to be nice where Mr. Tyree is concerned, because I'm a writer trying to make a living, so I can sympathize a bit. But he never mentioned "craft" one time in his piece--or "beauty". He talked about selling books first and foremost. As a poet who's trying to write her first novel and trying to wrap my head around the whole concept of needing to make money in order to start and keep a fiction career going--because poetry doesn't make money so we have to put aside our "contempt" for marketing and such if we want to have a fiction career--I don't want to cast aspersions on the brother simply because he's being realistic about how to keep his books on the shelf.

But my first problem is that he keeps talking about "issues" in the community and how that spurred his writing ideas. Last I heard, writing literary fiction was about ART; if you start with the issue you want to address and then use your characters as mouthpieces, then you're going to have a problem. So what Mr. Tyree needs to accept is that he's not a literary writer; he's a pulp fiction writer. That said, a pulp fiction writer has his place, but I don't think that's the place Mr. Tyree wants to be.

My second problem is that Mr. Tyree needs to put his considerable ego aside and really talk toughly and honestly with himself AND the reading public about his responsibility in helping to create this horrible mess that is now black fiction. And then, once he's done that, he shouldn't be afraid to go back and take some writing workshops or actually seek out some well-known fiction writers for one-on-one mentoring. But his ego is all over that piece he wrote. He wants to believe that he's created something lasting, important and worthy of critical consideration in black literature, when in fact, the only thing he HAS done is create something lasting, but it's been dangerous for black writers and the black reading public as a whole.--And if I hear ONE MORE TIME someone say that "at least black people are reading", I am going to scream! It's fine if someone wants to read something silly once in a while, or even half the time. I do that myself. (I love gossip magazines!) But these "baby mama" books have taken over the black reading community's attention, and I don't think I am being condescending when I say that these readers just don't know any better. And why should they? They are trusting that if Barnes and Nobles--or their local black bookstore-- carries these books then they must be good and worthy.

I don't know just how damaging this has been personally to my career because I haven't finished a novel, just a book of short stories that I've put aside for now. But I have enough friends who tell me their experiences. And I read about this all the time on people's blogs. And every time I go to the Barnes and Nobles or Borders and see the extremely small offering of black literary fiction made even smaller to make room for "street literature" or "urban classics" or whatever you want to call them, I get depressed, both as a writer and as an intellectual.

However, despite my anger about the state of black fiction, the one thing I can do is applaud Mr. Tyree's business sense even though I can criticize his skills as a writer. Some of us black literary writers could learn from Mr. Tyree in terms of learning how to connect with the reading public and getting our names out there. Because there's no shame in writing good, readable literary fiction. I'm thinking of a book like Walter Moseley's Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned. He has his issues with urban blight, black male criminality,etc. in there. He's covering those community bases all over the place. But the book is just a really yummy, artistic-yet-reader-friendly book. Or what about the ultimate fabulous, reader-friendly book--once you can wrap your eyes around the dialect on the page-- Their Eyes Were Watching God? That should be a lesson to us all.

We black writers can do both. We can create real art that "the people" can respond to as well and put a little cash in our pockets in the process. I truly believe that. So I really want to give Mr. Tyree a chance to move forward as an artist; I say we give him five years and then check back with him.:-)

Comment #3, by Jackie

Yesterday as I entered the Woodlawn public library, I saw first that lots of teens were on the computers. Then as I rounded the corner, there was a display of street lit in my path. Two young black teens were slightly ahead of me and this is where they stopped to check out the public library's latest street lit offerings. This library in Baltimore serves a large black population, being located next to a high school that over two decades has gone from white to black with social issues that have overtaken any academic achievement (e.g. student's MOTHER went to the school to beat up another student who was bullying her daughter; this took place during the stop the violence rally in the auditorium).

There are a lot of authors, quality authors and reading material that could have been put in the path of young people, but we are telling them Zane and Terri Woods and new and forgettable authors are valid choices.

Now having said all that, do any of us get upset at the Romance genre? Who reads that stuff ? Has reading it caused any irreparable harm? It has it's own section in any chain bookstore. I'm just saying. Sometimes I don't know what to make of any of it.

Comment #4, by Mea

This topic is intriguing. I once did a paper on the segregation of mainstream and African American fiction in major book stores, and my observations on the abundance of "street lit" were noted. I also made note that African American classics of the so-called "black literary canon," as Walker's "The Color Purple," Baldwin's "Go Tell It On the Mountain," Wright's "Native Son," Morrison's "Beloved," etc. were all thrown in on the same shelf as titles like "Chickenhead Central," "A Hustler's Wife," and "Ghetto Girls, Part 82." As an aspiring literary writer who just so happens to have African American characters, it is quite disheartening to come to grips that I may not make as much money as the sister next to me who actually aspires to write "black chick lit" (and I do know someone who openly admitted this in a writing class...I'd still like to slap her now). Omar Tyree's retirement article makes some valid statements on the level of black readership (that all "we" care about are these sleazy topics) and that he no longer cares to entertain the "dumbing down" of the black race. But what will his retirement mean for the genre as a whole? Only more spaces on the shelves for another edition of "Sex, Love, and Lies" and 5 more Zane eroticas.