There's been an email going around for the last couple of weeks in the African-American community that I have debated writing about. Mostly I've just been too busy to write, and I still in some ways feel like I should let this pass without saying anything, however….
Ok, some background – I have long felt that a lot of black authors sacrifice themselves, their integrity and just plain good writing at the altar of money. Lots of people call these books "ghetto lit", I call it just plain trash. I've been biding my time, waiting until I was able to review a few more of these books on the blog before I opined about this phenomenon, which to me seem to be getting worse and worse. Ms. McMillan's email is directed to three women in charge of publishing these books at Simon & Schuster (they are also her ex-husband's publishers) and for the most part I agree with her on just about all of the issues. My issue with this whole thing is quite simple – what took her so long to take this stand? Why now, not more than a week after her ex's book (a fictional tell-all) was released? Makes one wonder.
Wow...nothing like airing more of your dirty laundry via email. Don't people know that email is the easiest form of communication to go public? Maybe Ms. McMillian doesn't care, it doesn't seem like she does. Maybe what she cares about is that her ex beat her to the "tell all" about their relationship and that he'll profit from it instead of her.
ReplyDeleteI've never read her books, so I can't comment on her writing style and all of that so I won't.
I do think that maybe she should try to mentor young AA authors instead of saying they are all crap. Because as us avid readers know even your favorite and a great author can churn out crap every once and a while and that's just not in the AA community of authors.