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Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 3158
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 06, 2005 - 12:38 pm: | 
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This weekend, I watched Walter Mosley on C-SPAN II (originally aired in April) say that it was “easy” for a Black author to get published because Blacks are the only growing segment of the otherwise shrinking book market.
Sure “easy” is a relative term. But would you agree that on average Black authors are as likely - if not more so - to get published as non-Black authors?
Btw: As you may have guessed, Mosley laments the ‘quality’ of many of the Black books. |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 1197
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 06, 2005 - 01:06 pm: |
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Abm:
I guess, as Bill Clinton said, it depends on what your definition of "easy" is--and also what kind of publishing one is looking for.
I do not think it is easy for most authors to get published, white or black. Mosley may be looking at the explosion of "You Go Girl" and "In The Hood" books--and noting how his non-Easy Rawlins books don't go anywhere-- and deciding that this indicates an ease of getting published.
I think he is playa hating. |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 3159
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 06, 2005 - 01:36 pm: |
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Chris,
You may have something there. His delivery did appear a bit flippant or dismissive.
However, there do appear to be so many more new Black authors appearing on the scene than ever before.
So maybe Mosley was being an 'earnest' hater. |
Kola
Moderator
Username: Kola
Post Number: 1242
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 06, 2005 - 01:39 pm: |
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ABM!!!!
Hello my loved one.
It was also Mosley who once claimed that unlike other authors--HE--doesn't write with an agenda.
And then, too, he was full of it.
I really like Mosley's work....I think he's brilliant.....AND I like him as a person for as much as I know (note--he's married to a white lady and I actually LOVE him, ABM, so make sure you count that).
But trust me---since you HAVE read the quality of my own writing and since so many have lamented it's obvious appeal-----you see clearly that it is NOT EASY for black authors who have something to say....to get published.
It's sort of like the Hip Hop Biz. They want to inundate the landscape with those artists who are willing to best reinforce the stereotypes---in other words, the Trash and Scum acts get signed and promoted en masse and the people like Jervey Tavalon (is that his name?) get sued by their publishers for the advance check back.
Real black artists with something substantial to say (or who are avante garde or who create their own Genre--such as Chris Hayden) GO NOWHERE.
NOTE: Only after I had appeared in two 90 minute radio interviews on singer Stevie Wonder's radio station, KJLH was I able to get a deal.....Black Male Executives listening to the broadcast CALLED IN during my 2nd interview and offered to start a publishing company to put my books IN PRINT in the U.S.A. They started Door of Kush and have since signed and published other authors, but are NOT book people. They are "black men with money" who felt outraged that MY VOICE (as radical as it is) was being "Dis-allowed" by the powers that be when it was so obvious to me that I should be heard.
Stroke of luck, a viably confrontational Social Agenda and great "tits" got me in---and I'm VERY PROUD of that.
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Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 3160
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 06, 2005 - 01:43 pm: |
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Howdy Kola!
I hope you had a great (yet safe) time in DC. 
Funny you mention Mosley (who's mother is Jewish) having a White wife. Because during the interview he admitted he's often received critism from Black women about his portrayals of sistahs in his books.
Assuming their views are legitimate, maybe his mating choices is indirectly manifesting in his writing. |
Kola
Moderator
Username: Kola
Post Number: 1244
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 06, 2005 - 02:08 pm: |
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Well, ABM, like many in the United States....Mosley "fetishes" the Black Male and casually sees the black female as "PART" of the Black Male----not an entity in herself.
In many, many ways...the black female is a phantom after-thought (usually represented by mulatto or yellow experience when she does appear in Art/Media).....and hardly ever represented by her own voice. On top of that---a GREAT DEAL of the black women in this society are "weak" but called strong, which means they don't adequately pursue a place of power based on their black femaleness-----and those who do are labeled "evil, pushy, attitude-induced black women". IMAGINE if MLK and Malcolm had been Black women...they would have been accused of having "jealous, spiteful attitudes" towards the POSITIONS of White Men. And if Muhammad Ali had been a "bw"---the black community NEVER would have accepted and applauded his bravado and swaggering, but as a male, it was encouraged and respected.
Obviously...if the Black Woman is to perish, then the Black Man can't get born.
And therein lies the great failure of men like Walter Mosley and John Edgar Wideman who have both celebrated the BLACK MAN and yet WHINED incessantly in their work about the treatment of Black men....but have failed to honor or truthfully portray the womb from which the black man comes.
I for one, LOATHED Mosley's book "Black Betty"---loving the character herself-----but feeling hurt that after Mosley had written so many young, dainty desirable mulatto and WHITE women in his books...he chose to do an entire book about a black woman who was no longer of "child bearing age" and not decidely glamorous and dark and perilously interesting as his black male characters are. The whole book reeked of him trying to NOD to black female readers.
And that is the state of Black America itself. The man is coddled and babied, worried after....the black woman is hissed at and ignored or "written off" as evil. Only as a little girl or as an OLD WOMAN is the Black woman given any place of "respect".
Being an OUTSIDER, I notice it far more than you who are used to it.
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Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 3163
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 06, 2005 - 02:15 pm: |
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Nothing says lovin' quite like Kola's inevitable recitations of the myriad inadequacies of Black men.
Right fellas? |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 3164
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 06, 2005 - 02:16 pm: |
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Hey. Maybe Mosley confused how “easy” it is for all Black authors to get published with his popular “’Easy’ Rawlins” character. |
Kola
Moderator
Username: Kola
Post Number: 1246
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 06, 2005 - 02:24 pm: |
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ABM,
did you read my FIRST post? I thought I praised several black men.
And the second post was in response to a question you posed.
I don't think I was POINTING OUT black men's bad traits, but merely surely how the entire SOCIETY is set.
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Kola
Moderator
Username: Kola
Post Number: 1247
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 06, 2005 - 02:25 pm: |
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NOTE: Only after I had appeared in two 90 minute radio interviews on singer Stevie Wonder's radio station, KJLH was I able to get a deal.....Black Male Executives listening to the broadcast CALLED IN during my 2nd interview and offered to start a publishing company to put my books IN PRINT in the U.S.A. They started Door of Kush and have since signed and published other authors, but are NOT book people. They are "black men with money" who felt outraged that MY VOICE (as radical as it is) was being "Dis-allowed" by the powers that be when it was so obvious to me that I should be heard.
Stroke of luck, a viably confrontational Social Agenda and great "tits" got me in---and I'm VERY PROUD of that.
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Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 3165
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 06, 2005 - 02:25 pm: |
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Kola,
HAHA!
Just messin' witcha, kid. |
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