Firstly, I want to start this article by saying that most of the writers who author works like The Hate U Give and Homegoing are amazing writers. These stories evoke emotion through incredible world building and character development, allowing us to fall in love with each character and immerse ourselves in their stories.
However, I would like to tell the publishing industry, the readers of the world, and (for God’s sake) The New York Times to stop forcing black writers to write upsetting, traumatic bullshit in order to sell their stories.
However, I would like to tell the publishing industry, the readers of the world, and (for God’s sake) The New York Times to stop forcing black writers to write upsetting, traumatic bullshit in order to sell their stories.
What made me think of this
I absolutely hate The Hate U Give. I watched the movie first, as one does when they find out about a piece of literature first as a film, then as a book. I was told that the book was way better, so I bought it, but I wasn’t able to get through the first chapter.
I was dreading the climax before I had even gotten through the introduction.
Popular media has pushed “Black Trauma” as a genre that black writers have to force themselves to write in order to sell their novels. They want to see three things: sex (rape or otherwise), violence (police brutality, slavery, etc.), and longstanding emotional damage with some sort of obvious message attached (namely, “black people are people too!!!”). This is what people want to read. They don’t really care about black stories, but they force upon black writers the job of educating white audiences about the struggles of being a black person, from explaining the long term impacts of slavery to articulating the flaws in racially motivated police brutality.
I was dreading the climax before I had even gotten through the introduction.
Popular media has pushed “Black Trauma” as a genre that black writers have to force themselves to write in order to sell their novels. They want to see three things: sex (rape or otherwise), violence (police brutality, slavery, etc.), and longstanding emotional damage with some sort of obvious message attached (namely, “black people are people too!!!”). This is what people want to read. They don’t really care about black stories, but they force upon black writers the job of educating white audiences about the struggles of being a black person, from explaining the long term impacts of slavery to articulating the flaws in racially motivated police brutality.
Black Literature for White People
“Black literature for white people” can be loosely defined as literature about black characters and their struggles with racism. In these stories, the only conflict is racial tension, and the message is one that black people already know, which means that the events in the book don’t do anything but further traumatize black people. Black literature for white people capitalizes off sensationalizing (and sometimes, simply rewriting stories of) black trauma in order to educate or gain the sympathy of white audiences without regard for the effect of the literature on black people’s mental health or emotional wellbeing.
The people pushing these stories are the ones making money off them. They know that they can sell a story about police brutality, but they don’t know if they can make money through depictions of black success or (my actual reason for writing this article) black characters in completely fictional fantasy stories. But what’s crazy to me is that they don’t have to push these traumatic stories to make money. If you look at the box office numbers, The Hate U Give made a little over thirty million dollars, while movies like A Wrinkle in Time and Woman King made either close to or more than one hundred million. Clearly, black people are going out to see stories that let them leave the theater feeling empowered, not the ones that demoralize them or the ones that have them debating with white conservative Trump supporters on Twitter the day after seeing it. So, if these are the real, actual numbers, why do stories like See You Yesterday and Two Distant Strangers continue to be forced down our throats?
This is black literature for white people– i.e., What is going to make white teens feel the most “woke” after watching it?
The people pushing these stories are the ones making money off them. They know that they can sell a story about police brutality, but they don’t know if they can make money through depictions of black success or (my actual reason for writing this article) black characters in completely fictional fantasy stories. But what’s crazy to me is that they don’t have to push these traumatic stories to make money. If you look at the box office numbers, The Hate U Give made a little over thirty million dollars, while movies like A Wrinkle in Time and Woman King made either close to or more than one hundred million. Clearly, black people are going out to see stories that let them leave the theater feeling empowered, not the ones that demoralize them or the ones that have them debating with white conservative Trump supporters on Twitter the day after seeing it. So, if these are the real, actual numbers, why do stories like See You Yesterday and Two Distant Strangers continue to be forced down our throats?
This is black literature for white people– i.e., What is going to make white teens feel the most “woke” after watching it?
What We Need
I want to see stories like Harry Potter (let’s not talk about JK Rowling) with black main characters. I want to see a black superhero–no, not African (see Betty’s article for further explanation). I mean black, and not a black hero who battles racism (*cough* Black Lightning *cough*). I want to see a black genius who is just that. Their dad doesn’t have to be absent, their friends and siblings don’t have to get shot to death, and they don’t have to go to a predominantly white school.
We need to allow black authors to write stories about themselves that don’t center around heartache. After all, is a book really empowering if it centers around the fallout of white people’s actions? I don’t know about anyone else, but I find it almost insulting that I’m expected to find identity in books about my people suffering from white actions. If anything, books like that are just more books about white people. And I’m sick of that.
What do black people need to do in order to get an acceptable ratio of black to white fiction that really is just fiction? What we’re seeing in literature right now is black creatives’ desperate attempts to make a space for themselves in a world that has always capitalized off the erasure of black stories. Another problem arises, however, when you don’t allow creatives to be creative, instead forcing them to, once again, put themselves into a box in order to be accepted in a place that hates them. To be a New York Times Best Seller, to get accolades from the Washington Post, they have to comply.
Once popular media allows black writers to write anything other than trauma, black voices will finally get the platform that they deserve.
We need to allow black authors to write stories about themselves that don’t center around heartache. After all, is a book really empowering if it centers around the fallout of white people’s actions? I don’t know about anyone else, but I find it almost insulting that I’m expected to find identity in books about my people suffering from white actions. If anything, books like that are just more books about white people. And I’m sick of that.
What do black people need to do in order to get an acceptable ratio of black to white fiction that really is just fiction? What we’re seeing in literature right now is black creatives’ desperate attempts to make a space for themselves in a world that has always capitalized off the erasure of black stories. Another problem arises, however, when you don’t allow creatives to be creative, instead forcing them to, once again, put themselves into a box in order to be accepted in a place that hates them. To be a New York Times Best Seller, to get accolades from the Washington Post, they have to comply.
Once popular media allows black writers to write anything other than trauma, black voices will finally get the platform that they deserve.
Trinity jones
