Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Poll results

Obviously, this poll was extremely unscientific and, therefore, was not meant to be a definitive statement on whether or not bookstores should have black book sections. Which is good since our results are mixed. Almost half of us are of mixed feelings about the African American fiction section (44%), though 29% of us think that they shouldn't exist and 25% of us think they should.

I'm sorry I didn't make it clear with the poll that there was a book give-away attached for those who commented and linked. I'll do better next time. But there was and the winner is Angie! She'll get a free paperback copy of Seen it All and Done the Rest by Pearl Cleage from me. (Why do I have a free copy? Because I conducted the interview with Pearl that's in the reader's guide.) Congrats Angie and thanks to everyone who voted!

1 comment:

Angie said...

Thanks again -- I'm looking for ward to getting the book. :)

Playing catch-up on my blog reading since I'm up in Reno visiting my mom and not online much. We went to B&N tonight and I was poking around looking for books. I found a new Steve Barnes (Great Sky Woman) in the SF section (which isn't unusual -- SF/Fantasy is pretty good about shelving Black authors in the genre section) but there were no Black authors I recognized in the romance section, and very little fiction (and nothing that looked like romance) in the African American section either. So it looks like this B&N, at least, has solved the problem by just not carrying many books by Black authors at all, unless they're established SF/F authors or are big names like Toni Morrison (who had a new book out on one of the cover-up display tables). This strikes me as a majorly sub-optimal solution to the issue. :/

Angie