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

For Brockmann, Alyssa's biracial background was part of an attempt to bring more diversity to the lives of romance readers, who are typically middle aged, white females living in the Midwest. Alyssa, according to Brockmann's description, is a done of the light-skinned actress Vanessa Williams. "Traditionally, the romance industry is filled with stories about really, really, really white people," Brockmann says. "I get charged up by differences, and I try to bring that to my books." Brockmann tries to give her characters substance by reading African American writers.

It is all about sales not idealism, says Diggs. "These writers see that African American characters are very popular right now, so they say 'Let me get my share of the market.' As a business decision, it makes perfect sense. There's nothing altruistic about it."

The problem is that few white writers can create black characters that strike black readers as vividly valued. Even more serious literary lights like Tom Wolfe often misses the mark more often than not. Wolfe won accolades for creating Reverend Bacon, a manipulative Harlem minister, in his novel Bonfire of the Vanities (Douglas and McIntyre Publishing Group, November 1987). That insight is missing in A Man in Full (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, November 1998) in which he offers up blacks straight out of central casting. Roger "Too" White, an uptight, self-hating lawyer, and Fareek Fanon, a college football star with ghetto roots.

The questions are do we as African Americans stomp on these writers for exploiting black characters and perpetuating negative stereotypes? Of do we applaud their efforts for at least trying to include people of color in the mainstream?

One African American, Bebe Moore Campbell, author of What You Owe Me (Berkley Publishing, September 2002), hesitates to applaud, but she says, "It is a step forward when they try."

Earni Young is a staff writer at the Philadelphia Daily News.