miker wrote:
"I had to smile when I read the part about publishers being
leery of marketing books with a black male
protagonist."
I got the impression from the article that the problem was
the type of black male protagonist, a street one with few, if
any, redeeming qualities. As the article points out, Ellison,
Wright, Baldwin, etc, who were thought to appeal to a more
literary audience all found major publishers. And the same
class battle goes on, as seen in the reaction to the pretty
much stillborn Syndicated Books, which had planned to be a
younger version of Holloway House, attaching a tie-in hip-hop
CD to each of its books.
"The general rule of empathy is that like attracts like, so
that means they were targeting black male readers, and
publishers don't think they read."
And the writer of the article perpetuates this idea by making
such a big point of how popular Goines's books are in prison,
how DMX and many others first read him there, implying that
his readership only picks up a book when they are confined
with nothing else to do.
Mark
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