Something To Think About...

I've become a huge book store groupie over the past 5 months. I could spend hours in a books store just looking and skimming through all the books that I would like to read. Anyway, I came across these two blog postings that talk about black literature and how its marketed in books stores. The first post Desegregate Our Bookstores and the second White Readers Meet Black Authors: What is a "black" novel?.

Its funny, because the book store that I like to go to is really small, and they have an Black books section. Its a semi circle and it sits right in the front of the store. The outside of the circle are mostly black non-fiction and books by more established black authors. Then the inside is jam packed with hood novels (and I'm not sure if that's the right thing to call them but, whatever.) And it never occurred to me that the books were being segregated, I feel bad for not noticing. Because in this section they cram books so many books under the label black. And most of these books never make it out of this section unless its by a mistake or considered an American classic. Its even the case with the anthologies. If I want to pick up one on American Literature Post-Civil War I would go to that section of the store but in that same section I won't find an Anthology of literature from the Harlem Renaissance, I have to go to the black section and it would be sandwich between a Barack Obama book and the autobiography of Dr. Ben Carson.

WOW! Things that blow your mind. It happens at the library as well. I know the books are arranged by the Dewey decimal system but all the black books at my local library have a special little sticker along the spine that let's you know that this just isn't any book. Its a black book. Which does one of two things, it welcomes your to pick it up, or urges you to find something less ethnic.


I just brought books the other day too. I picked up 5 new books and spent $60. I know. Baller Right. I got:

A Piece of Cake by Cupcake Brown (Shout out to my wifey Clever Vixen)
Gentle Man Jigger by Richard Bruce Nugent
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros


See, I'm diversifying my reading. Black man. Black woman. Asian woman. Hispanic woman. Yeah


Food for thought,

KD