Publishing While Black: A Scratch Roundtable
I can’t tell you how hard I was nodding my head in agreement while reading this post, especially at these parts:
What did it feel like when you were starting out to encounter that—to be like, “I’m entering into a business that is not particularly welcoming to me. How do I do that?”
Harmony Holiday: I don’t think you can go about it thinking like that. For me, what’s worked is just literally not thinking about it at all. Putting on some sort of blinders, so you’re not always working with that anxiety.
That is exactly what I do! And:
Holiday: Being black in America, you kind of grow up knowing from the beginning what about you sells, or what is fetishized about you. So on some level you have an advantage. It’s just somewhere in your subconscious at all times as a sort of protective evolutionary device. You know how your “brand” is. My first book was blatantly called Negro League Baseball. Not because it was pandering to that; because that’s what it needed to be called. But I do think being that flamboyant about something, if it’s in your personality, that’s maybe what sells, besides the quality of the work.
Yes. I had a discussion with another writer recently about what my “brand” was, and she said, “Your brand is lesbians.” It’s not fair, because if you write a book about straight people, nobody says “Your brand is straight people.” But that’s the way it is, and I feel like the only way I can be happy in this business is to own it and simultaneously not think about it so that it doesn’t stunt my creativity.
Anyway, the whole post is totally worth reading if you’re interested in diversity issues and racism in publishing.
