Writers Reconsider the Bookstore's 'Black Section'

Filed under: Media

Do booksellers still need sections dedicated to black authors and books?

That's what Arielle Loren is wrestling with over at Clutch. When Loren was younger, she appreciated that there was a space where she could easily find the books she said reflected her interests. But now that she's a professional writer, she wonders if the black section is keeping black authors' work from getting a wider reading.

"Why not diversify mainstream front store literature to reflect the multicultural reality of this country?" she asks. "More than black readers ought to be reading black literature."

It's a worthy question, considering how much fewer people are buying books and how thin the connective tissue often is between the books arrayed under the black banner. A bookstore might house Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father, Octavia Butler's Kindred and Zane's The Heat Seekers --- memoir, sci-fi/fantasy, and erotica, respectively --- all on the same shelves. Having serious fiction rubbing up against street-lit and bodice-rippers could leave some writers feeling relegated to some literary ghetto. (Um, pardon the phrasing.)

"As an author and a former bookstore employee, anything that potentially makes a book harder to find could be a concern," Danielle Evans, the author of the lauded Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, told BlackVoices. "I have on occasion walked out of a bookstore or bought something else after not finding a book that I was looking for in the lit section, and then blocks away realized I should have asked if it was in the af-am section, because it can be hard to remember which stores shelve what where, and which stores have African-American sections."

But she was ambivalent about the prospect of scuttling them altogether. "I think we can give African American readers enough credit to think they won't stop finding or buying books just because they're mixed in with the larger book section, she said. "But I think they can still signal a 'you are welcome here,' which might be meaningful to people who are often made to feel not welcome in retail spaces? It's sad that that would be necessary, and if there is a benefit, there is certainly also a cost, but it's not something to write off completely."

What, fair readers, do you think?

 

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