How to Get More Blacks to Read Specul...

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Author Message   Chrishayden "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Chrishayden Post Number: 2509 Registered: 03-2004 Rating: N/A Votes: 0 (Vote!) Posted on Tuesday, August 01, 2006 - 10:55 am:        How to Get More Black Folks to Read Speculative Fiction Check it out! In this little posting the Notorious BIG of SF feeds himself Humble Pie! On this and many another list time after time the above question has been put: how can we get more blacks to read SF? And time after time I have brushed off the question with contempt. “Forget it!” “Never happened” “I have resigned myself” Do a search for the particular postings and quotes. Well, yesterday I proved myself wrong. July 31, 2006. I have received an invitation to do a presentation for Yari Yari. For those not in the know Yari Yari (which means “The Future” I think) is a cultural/ literary camp/group for African American kids put on by Sisters Nineties of St. Louis. Debra MorrowLoving, president, usually runs these sessions ably assisted by Sis. Wilma Potts. The kids get education, culture, politics, everything. I have been a guest before. When I received my invite I thought , “No sweat. I’ll pull together a killer program of my poetry and dazzle them with my words.” The more I thought of it, the less I thought of it. I have dazzled them thus a couple times in the last six months that I know, and several times over the past few years. Visions filled my head of them rolling their eyes and snorting because they heard it all before. Kids are not dumb. But I am. What do we talk about around here all the time? What were the last two articles I submitted to Sisters Nineties about? What can I offer an opinion about, however wrong and beknighted. Speculative Fiction. Furthermore, Blacks in Speculative Fiction. So I whipped up an outline, a handout with some terms, author names and websites and appeared. I spoke to a roomful of young men and women, 6-17. First they introduced themselves and then they recited from memory Shakespeare’s Sonnet #27. Then I got into it. I insisted on conducting it as a conversation. I spoke. I read from my own works. I answered questions and asked them some. I learned. This is the group, people, that is into SF. The group that has seen the Matrix, knows about Harry Potter, reads the comix, watches the Star Treks. They wanted to know about Blacks writing SF and SF books with blacks in them. Not just them. Apparently the teachers knew about Octavia Butler, Steven Barnes, Tananarive Due. They knew about the Mother of the Matrix controversy. They didn’t know about the Lion’s Blood and Zulu Dawn books and got all excited and took down the titles when I told them about them being an Alternative History where Africans owning white European slaves settled the Americas. (Steve! This is a shoutout! You gots to go where the people AT! The traditional methods and ways of flogging books are not going to work with black folks—particularly since they probably are not approaching them). Eureka! Here, by accident, is the formula. And you know what? Their next assignment for Yari Yari is to write a Speculative Fiction story (one young lady came up with a plot on the spot that mixed fantasy, sci fi, mythology and was a knock out). A young man confessed on the spot for the first time that he wants to be a comic book writer. Another young lady took my list and went right to the library to start looking up some of the authors and sites. You want more Black Folks to read SF? Take Black SF to the audience. Go to the schools, the community organizations, the clubs, the community centers, the jails and juvie halls, where these kids are and tell them about it. They are hungry to read about themselves. Go where the people AT! Stop sitting around in your conventions and panel discussion, preaching to the choir where they A’INT! Bop! Zap! Boom! There it is! No charge, man.   Abm "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Abm Post Number: 5621 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A Votes: 0 (Vote!) Posted on Tuesday, August 01, 2006 - 11:46 am:        You didn't try to discourage the kid from being a comic book writer. Did you? I mean, we all know your kneejerk fear/lust of Marvel superheroes.   Chrishayden "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Chrishayden Post Number: 2513 Registered: 03-2004 Rating: N/A Votes: 0 (Vote!) Posted on Tuesday, August 01, 2006 - 02:45 pm:        I conferred with his mother and we are taking him to the Humane Society Friday where she shall have him destroyed.