In Memory of Author Erica Kennedy

Note: This has details about how to make a donation in Erica's honor, per her family's request.

Erica Kennedy, author of Bling and Feminista, died last week. There are several moving tributes and remembrances of her as a friend and writer of social commentary and articles. Here, I wanted to remember her as an author with a re-post of the Q&A she did here on this blog and a tribute from Doret at The Happy Nappy Bookseller blog.

In her own words
I published the "Meet Erica Kennedy" Q&A when Feminista published in 2009. This weekend, I felt a deep pang rereading some of her comments, like the following:

"I tackle most things with humor and that's how I think of myself: as a humorist. Sometimes I think that comes out of the fact that I had a very dysfunctional childhood and I have suffered from depression so it's a 'tears of a clown' thing. You need to find the humor in everything just to survive. Like if I were ever to write an Augusten Burroughs-style memoir of dysfunction -- and I could -- it would still be funny like his always are."

But overall, I found her answers to be funny, wickedly smart and full of energy and ideas and wanted more people to read them. For example, check out this almost throw-away analysis of Beyonce and Jay-Z that could literally have sparked a magazine article, PhD thesis or a nonfiction book or novel.

"I think everyone loves Beyonce, this global superstar who literally has it all at 27, because she always takes the 'I'm so blessed just to be here' road and shunts all of her aggression and ambition off on an ALTER EGO. I swear I could write a whole DISSERTATION on the meaning of Sasha Fierce which is at once totally brilliant and totally terrifying that you have to go to that extent to be wildly successful and still be liked if you are a woman. Meanwhile, her husband, the former drug dealer who once shot his brother, stabbed a record executive, brags endlessly, like all male rappers, about how much dough he makes, can let everyone know exactly who he is. The difference in what they each had to do to get and maintain their success is ASTOUNDING."

I thought it fitting for my tribute to be to let Erica's own words about the meaning of her work honor her. When I go, I know that part of what I will leave behind is my words. I hope they represent me as well as Erica's do her. May she rest in peace.

Book give-away and tribute from a reader
And let's not forget the novels themselves! Doret certainly hasn't and doesn't want you to either. She so strongly wants us to remember that she's giving away 2 copies of Feminista. To be entered to win, leave a comment on this blog post. This contest is open until 7 p.m. Eastern Friday, June 22, 2012. I'll pick winners at random. You must live in the lower 48 United States to be eligible.

Everything below is from Doret:

On June 16th, I was having a very nice uneventful Saturday. The weather was good. I spent a few hours at Cozee Tea, a new Black-owned tea shop in Decatur, GA, and got some reading in. While I was enjoying my day, news of author Erica Kennedy's death was quickly making its way around twitter. Since I don't have a twitter account, I was blissfully unaware until a friend emailed the news. It took a moment for the news to sink in, and when it did I wish it hadn't. I haven't been this upset about an author's death since Bebe Campbell Moore and Octavia Butler died in 2006. Kennedy only published two novels, Bling and Feminista, however anyone who has read either will attest to her talent.   Especially Feminista, which showed growth, range and added some much needed depth to the chick lit genre.

If we lived in a world that fully embraced talented Black women writers, Feminista would've gotten the recognition it deserved. After said praise, Kennedy would've received a well-earned new book deal. I should be anticipating Kennedy's next novel but now there is no next. That cannot be undone, but what can be done is to read what we have.

Artists live on through their work and I like to believe that they know when their work is loved even after they left us. Wherever the after is, I like to believe that writers are touched that the words they've left behind are remembered and still move us in some way. So one day I will reread Bling and Feminista, but not anytime soon. When I am strong enough to immerse myself in one of Kennedy's novels again, I will say a silent prayer for the author, and send her my thanks for giving the world two novels that make laughter so easy.  

And now for some good news!

Congratulations to Natasha Trethewey who will be named our new poet laureate today!

Watch the video below to hear in her own words what motivates her to write.

On Race and Book Reviews

It's been a while since I've done a blog post about the state of things regarding race and publishing. The reality makes me tired and I'm busy and can't afford to be tired. It can make me depressed and I sure can't afford to get depressed. Plus, I feel like I've said what I had to say on the subject.

Fortunately, there are others not so tired. For example, Roxane Gay decided to take a look at race and book reviews, specifically at The New York Times. The analysis reveals what most of the readers of this blog probably suspect. The Times, they are not really changin' so much.

From her article published by The Rumpus:

"The numbers are grim. Nearly 90% of the books reviewed by The New York Times are written by white writers. That is not even remotely reflective of the racial makeup of this country, where 72% of the population, according to the 2010 census, is white. We know that far more than 81 books were published by writers of color in 2011. You don’t really need other datasets to see this rather glaring imbalance."

Hopefully these numbers will encourage review outlets to be more inclusive in reviewing books—considering race, gender and let us not forget sexuality or other brands of difference—rather than treating diversity as a compartmentalized issue where we can only focus on one kind of inequity at a time. Such mindfulness is important. If we want to encourage people to be better, broader readers, that effort starts by giving readers a better, broader selection of books to choose from.

But go read the whole thing. Look at the pie chart. The sad, sad pie chart. Like Gay, I sure don't pretend to have all the answers, but clearly one is to shed light on the situation as Gay does here.

In related news author Jennifer Weiner (mentioned in Gay's article) shouted out this blog at BEA this week and posted her speech on her blog.

Win a copy of The Devil in Silver

Hat tip to Twitter and author @matjohnson for the news that Victor LaValle is giving away a copy of his upcoming novel The Devil in Silver. I loved Big Machine, which was a little scary. This new one sounds really scary! (Devils are big this summer Devil's Wake, Tananarive Due's and Steven Barnes' zombie novel is out soon too!)

Freeman

I fell in love with Leonard Pitts Jr.'s fiction with Before I Forget. Now he's out with a new one, Freeman, coming in May (available for pre-order now). His publisher (which, full disclosure, is set to publish a book by me for writers) sent me a copy. It's a beautiful book, and I highly recommend it.

Set after Abraham Lincoln is assassinated, it's the story of Sam, a runaway slave who sets out on a long journey to find his wife who was still stuck in slavery. Freeman is a love story, as you can tell when you read the first line: "His first thought was of her."

Following is part of a Q&A with Pitts from Agate's press kit on their website. At this link you can read the entire interview and Chapter One of Freeman. I'm excited to see the tour that Pitts and Agate have put together to promote this book. Pitts will follow the same route that Sam does in the book. Go here to see if he's coming to your city.

Q: What was the genesis for Freeman? Where did the idea first come from?

A: Years ago, I read the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Been In The Storm So Long, by Leon F. Litwack, about the lives of the slaves during and immediately after the Civil War. One of the most poignant things I learned from that book was the ordeal freed slaves went through to find their lost and separated family members. Men and women wrote letters, haunted the offices of the Freedmen’s Bureau, and walked hundreds of miles in search of their mothers and brothers and sisters and sons and husbands and wives. The quests were rarely successful; it was not uncommon, for example, for a man to find his wife only to discover that she had given him up for dead and taken up with another man. The idea that freed men and women would strive to be reunited that way, against such impossible odds, struck me as a profound and inspiring statement about the importance they attached to family and to loved ones. It also struck me that this is an aspect of history about which most of us have no clue. It’s something I’ve always kept in the back of my mind. I always thought it would provide the framework for a compelling novel.

Q: Why did you write Freeman? What were you hoping to accomplish with this story?

A: Well, obviously, the first goal of any novel is to entertain. Beyond that, though, there were a number of things I was out to accomplish. I wanted to write a love story that I thought would have a particular resonance for African-American women. I think there is something inherently affirming in the idea that a man would walk a thousand miles in a nearly hopeless search for one particular woman. I wanted to question, albeit indirectly, the whole stereotype of African Americans as a people who are frivolous about family connections, particularly paternal connections. That was certainly not the case right after the Civil War. Finally, I wanted to deal with questions of identity. We tend to treat race as something obvious and immutable, a bright, hard line of separation that cannot be crossed. But from science’s point of view, race does not exist—it’s a myth—and if you look at the history of race, you find it’s a lot more complicated and self-contradictory than we typically believe. I liked the idea of characters grappling with identity in the context of a country that was forced to do the same.

Q: What kind of research did you do in working on the book? Did you learn anything
that surprised you?

A: Researching a historical novel is less about finding out what happened when than about trying to unearth the small details that will help you recreate the physical look of a given time and place, i.e., a grocery story in 1865. I spent a lot of time in the Library of Congress. I also toured a railroad museum and a place that uses horses to help rehabilitate the physically handicapped. I should mention, also, that some of the minor episodes in Freeman—for example, the woman who approaches Sam and Ben in the courthouse, looking for her long lost baby—are fictionalized renditions of things that I learned had actually happened.

Note to readers: I recently signed a contract with Agate to publish a book for writers. The reason I signed on with them is because I admire their list. I was telling folks about their books long before I became one of their authors, but I thought I ought to make it public.

Hot off the presses!

Get your fresh, hot fiction! It's a popping April and May! A few upcoming or recent releases I'm delighted to tell you about:

The six novels in Gar Anthony Haywood's mystery series featuring Aaron Gunner, a South-Central Los Angeles native and African-American private investigator, are being rereleased by Mysterious Press!

Speaking of mysteries, Robert Greer has a new one in his CJ Floyd series: Astrid a Pink Horse. See my Q&A with Greer here!

Creeping With the Enemy, the second in Kim Reid's Langdon Prep YA mystery series is out April 24th!

Tayari Jones' big hit Silver Sparrow is out in May in paperback!

Leonard Pitts Jr.'s Freeman also comes out in May! A sweeping historical love story about a runaway slave who goes in search of his wife after the Civil War ends.

Speaking of love stories, Sadeqa Johnson's Love in a Carry On Bag is an old-school love story in the Terry McMillan tradition (and the movie Love Jones). If you're in the Black Expressions Book Club, it's an Alternate Selection for May!

Beverly Jenkins just released A Wish and a Prayer, a new one in her Blessings series. This is the fourth one, so you might want to hurry up and get started on the first three!

And if you like Christian fiction, check out Stacy Hawkins Adams' latest, Coming Home!

You probably already know this, but just in case you missed it: Eric Jerome Dickey and Toni Morrison also have new books. Dickey's is out now and Morrison's comes in May.

I'm reading Freeman now. What are you reading? What are you looking forward to?

Black women writers on Zora Neale Hurston

Alice Walker, Sonia Sanchez and Ruby Dee discussed Zora Neale Hurston at The Greene Space earlier this week in a panel moderated by Hurston's niece Lucy Anne Hurston. Here's the video. (Thanks to @VictoriainVerse for tweeting!)