leaving the table

I often think about this quote by Nina Simone and even worked it into one of the poems in SAY HER NAME. So many of us have been fighting for “a seat at the table,” but why pull up a chair for a meal poisoned by disrespect? Last week Black authors shared their advances on Twitter and White authors did the same. Not surprisingly, it quickly became clear that Black authors—even those who have won major awards—are routinely offered much less money by publishers. Most of us have known this for years, but it was important to have it out in the open. On Friday we got an offer from Random House for the third book in my dragon series. The protests around the murder of unarmed African Americans have gone global and most publishers have made public statements about their support of the Movement for Black Lives. These statements from corporations are suspect, of course, since it isn’t hard to take a look at their boardrooms and offices for proof of anything but inclusion and diversity. But I felt hopeful about the offer from Random House—after dropping the series without explanation, I thought maybe they finally saw the value of my stories and my voice. My editor said as much in a thoughtful email last week. But then the offer came in and it was so low and so offensive that I almost lost it. My agent tried to calm me down but I am DONE. I shared that Nina Simone lyric and told her I didn’t want her to fight for more. Sometimes you need to accept that people aren’t going to change because they don’t want to—and don’t have to. Another wise Black woman artist—Maya Angelou—reminded us not to trust sudden transformations: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

The good news is that we signed with a film agent on Thursday. He loves DRAGONS IN A BAG and will be pitching it to studios in the coming weeks. On Wednesday we actually had a conversation with a film studio and I’m hopeful that we’ll find a team that truly values my work. On Wednesday night I had a fun conversation with Joel A. Sutherland; if you missed our conversation on his show SOME GOOD BOOKS, you can watch the video on YouTube. Monday is my last poetry class for the BPL; I have three Zoom events over the next two weeks and hope I can manage to get some writing done before the month ends. Yesterday I realized I have close to thirty poems ready for publication. Maybe this summer I’ll self-publish another collection of poetry…