“Culture Stands on the Written Word”: Guest Blogger, Chris Chambers
I discovered Chris Chambers’s blog via the blogroll of some blogger we both read. Could you resist a blog called, “Nat Turner’s Revenge”? I couldn’t, so I clicked. Since then, I’ve enjoyed Chris’s commentary on politics, history, and sports (Yep, sports. I’ll say it again–if the writing is engaging, I’ll read it.). But I keep coming back for his straight-talk about books and the state of black literature in particular. Chris is a bestselling fiction author and a professor at Georgetown University. His upcoming works include The Darker Mask (graphic anthology with Gary Phillips and Walter Mosley), Yella Patsy’s Boys and Amos n’ Andy.
As our guest blogger today, Chris reminds us that “culture stands on the written word.” Think on this…
“Journalism is History’s first draft.”
Now Journalism–ethics, truth, standards, objectivity, professionalism–is all but dead. Replaced with “info-tainment,” rank punditry, lurid and silly ratings- grabbing craveness. Stupid rules. Sex (and I don’t mean real sex, but adolescent porn notions of sex) sells. If it bleeds, it leads. So much for History this Black History Month.
And if Journalism is History’s first draft, what is art, reading–books? Books, I’d say, are Culture’s legs. Maybe not its heart or backbone or brain. After all there’s music, dance, visual and fine arts. Yet Culture stands on the written word, the record of dreams, aspirations, yearnings, fears, triumphs, disappointments. What is our legacy going to be for Black History Months to come?
Sadly, it is stuff being peddled and controlled by huge white-owned media companies, packaged as “literature” or memoirs. A memoir of Barbara Jordan, or Michael Jordan, or Ralph Bunche is a memoir. The Video Vixen–bestselling author and name-dropping ho’ to rappers and sports stars–no that’s just porn and gossip. “Superhead” she calls herself, as middle aged church ladies and young women who’d be better off reading guides on money management and paying for college gobble up (smile) her tips on fellating yet another “rap mogul.” Then we come to fiction. “Ghetto Lit,” Street Fiction. And sappy romances. And “mama I want a thug but my baby needs diapers” parables. And cheesy melodramatic soap operas, rife with cliche heroines and villains and backstabbers…
…whew I’m out of breath!
No big deal? At least our people are reading in an age of declining literacy? Wrong. This is our legacy, our contribution to our story…to history. We have young people who think this stuff really is history, or real literature or true heroic tales. They say a story speaks to them as if a soap opera is a documentary. As if Tyler Perry’s House of Payne is The Wire, or are interchangeable. I have likened this stuff to Twinkies, to cake. These are treats. Brain candy. Dessert. To be eaten only as a treat, as a reward or after dinner sweet once you’ve dined on a sumptuous main course, or a new adventure in food. But no, we have allowed ourselves–and these huge corporations have become the pushers–to flip the script. Candy, dessert, the brain candy becomes dinner. It displaces dinner. It marginalizes dinner. The result? What happens when you eat to much junk, too much tasty candy. Your teeth rot. You are fat, bloated. Eventually you may very well die if you don’t change, as you spin the healthcare system out of cost-control taking every expensive medication you can afford. Yet all it takes is a balanced diet, some exercise. But sadly, that seems too much to ask of folks. And so we enter more Black History Months a little fatter, brains numb with candy.And we loose voices of art, of literature. Of history as vivid, breathing, evolving. Instead, history is a marketing gimmick. A product. A cliche. Something sweet to gorge on, or something to be used by hucksters and demagogues. No big deal, eh? Think again.
So what to do? History–our History–and our Culture is rife with debates and ideas. We must debate with maturity and a lack of bravado this issue of this crack or Twinkies for the brain in our books. We must find alternatives for these legs of Culture and writers of History to find an outlet. More publishing venues owned by us. More awareness and education for our young people. Scholarships, fellowships. Parents who care enough to have their kids read. Adults who care enough to avoid the brain candy and enrich themselves first. Notice here my solutions lend toward the personal, the spiritual, for unless Bill Gates or Bob Johnson or Sumner Redstone of Viacom or the hedge fund managers and foreign investors who really own Simon and Schuster or Random House suddenly have Ebenezer Scrooge epiphanies, nothing structurally is going to change soon.
Nevertheless, in the end, all History, all Culture, is personal, and it can change if we show the will to change it. That notion is was African Americans’ gift to the United States. That was in our literature, our Jazz, our Blues, our synthesis that gave us all strength and hope. Don’t believe me? Go read it in a good book–you’ll see.
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You are in the midst of a blogathon celebrating 32 Days of Black History! Yvette at Six Impossible Things…and I are joined by InkogNegro,Christina, Chris,and Tami.Visit, comment, bookmark!
February 19th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
Good post. I like the tie in to history. I am not all that geeked up about the debate over street Fiction or Zane books, but I agree we have a legacy that we are wasting.
February 19th, 2008 at 11:12 pm
Hey, Donte…Thanks for stopping by and leaving your two cents!
February 20th, 2008 at 7:55 am
Journalists and Commentators on Street Fiction (Street Lit) are loosing focus. The fact that so many African Americans are writing novels is history within itself. Let’s stop talking about what’s good or bad African American Literature and start publishing the statistics on the number of African American authors in the publishing industry. I’m sure Martin Luther King, Jr. is turning over in his grave at all of the attempts to have African Americans to stop writing and reading. We need to stop comparing and compiling. Our collective contributions to the publishing industry are tremendous.
February 20th, 2008 at 8:27 am
@ Ann:
Thanks for your comment. My hope was that Chris’s post would generate this kind of dialogue.
February 20th, 2008 at 10:53 am
It does sadden me that literature in the black community wasn’t more reflective of our history. We haven’t always had the advantage of being able to chronicle our heritage and past. Now that we are in an age where we create physical, literary archives of our “happenings” (both past and current) that can be passed on to our future generation we should take advantage of that. One of the setbacks of our current times among our people is that we don’t have official records from our ancestors that we can glean from and improve upon. It’sour duty to do that now.
You maybe interested in my new blog: http://voice-of-a-diaspora.blogspot.com/2008/02/why-black-history-month-matters.html