Writing while white … An unprecedented number of black characters inhabit today's mainstream fiction best-seller lists, but few of them are created by black authors

Black Issues Book Review, July-August, 2004 by Earni Young

Here is a typical scene for Lula and Stephanie in Ten Big Ones (St. Martin's Press, June 2004). The two are standing outside a deli debating lunch choices, when Stephanie asks Lula if she is still "officially a filing clerk" in the bail bonds office.

"Heck no," Lula said. "That's so-o-o boring. Do I look like a file clerk to you?"

Actually, Lula still looked like a hooker. Lula's a full-bodied black woman who favors animal print spandex enhanced with sequins, I figured Lula didn't want to hear my fashion opinion, so I didn't say anything, I just raised an eyebrow.

By contrast, Evanovich's Ranger is a Latino version of Hawk, the darkly menacing, monosyllabic backup man Parker created for his Spenser detective series. Hawk, the baddest bad-ass black man to ever leap from the pages of a novel, has only one purpose in life--to play backup for Spenser, a wisecracking white P.I. most recently in Bad Business (Penguin USA, March 2004).

Both are testosterone-loaded stereotypes defined by an endless sup ply of slick cars, designer duds, cool sunglasses and big guns. Parker writes Hawk as the ultimate angry black man whose violence is held in check by a personal code of tough-guy honor shared only by Spenser. Where Hawk goes when he is not with Spenser is a mystery that Parker never tries to solve.

That is as it should be, says Anita Diggs, an agent at The Literary Group and former senior editor at Ballantine Books. "Mysteries are not supposed to be in-depth character analysis. Mystery is plot based and plot driven."

ROUNDING OUT THE PICTURE

The status of African Americans in popular literature has improved since Uncle Tom nobly suffered the pages of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and Mark Twain created Jim, a runaway slave, as Huckleberry Finn's sidekick. These 19th-century efforts were followed in the 20th century by authors like William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams, both white Southerners for whom black characters were more symbolic figures than fully rounded personalities.

Blockett says contemporary white writers do best when they are writing black characters as a white character. "If the character is just written without race in mind and you cast a black person in that role, then at least when race is not the counterpoint of the theme, you're not relying on stereotypes," Blockett says. "You can say the character may be a little vacant, but it probably comes closer than consciously setting out to say 'I'm going to write about being black in America.' That's when you're setting yourself up for failure."

So where do white writers get these black folk?

Patterson has said that for Alex Cross he drew on memories of a black family he knew as a child, the members of his household. Coincidentally, they very much mirror roles played by Sidney Poitier and more recently Denzel Washington.

Brockmann, who gained a following for her series based on a team of Navy SEALS, made her hardcover debut with Gone Too Far (Ballantine Books, July 2003), a romantic thriller featuring Alyssa Locke, a biracial female FBI agent as the heroine, and Sam, a white SEAL team member, as the hero. Any tension between these two is purely sexual.