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A few years ago, I was invited to a book event by my alma mater. It was one of my first book events, and I was quite nervous. After reading my excerpt, I went to my table, where I was to greet attendees one-on-one. Even though my book had been published for a few months, it’s quite a different experience sharing your words with an audience face to face.
One of my first visitors was someone who attended college at the same time as I did. Back then, he was definitely what one would call a budding activist. I marched alongside him back then on some key issues around racism confronting our college. I, too, was an activist. I thought we were cool, so his first words shocked me.
“When are you going to stop writing this stuff?” He flicked the cover of my book bearing the image of my beautiful brown heroine.
At that same event, I’d read an excerpt of my book. I’d captured that very first feeling of realizing you’re the “only one.” Right there among a crowd of Black alumni and some leaders of our institution, I shared this character’s experience at a fictional university that lacked diversity. That moment reflected pieces of my life (and likely many others).
It was awkward to read it aloud — to connect and criticize simultaneously in one room.
Perhaps he missed that part because the character goes on to flirt with some girls and make party plans. But that’s the point.
Being consciously Black is a multilayered, multifaceted experience. You feel discrimination, isolation, happiness, and excitement. You cry, laugh, pine for a more inclusive world, and tweet about Cardi B’s latest single. You party with your people, and you mourn your people – all on the same day sometimes.
It’s not ideal. But it’s reality, and that’s always what I aim to capture. Don’t Let Me Fall was my first book, published in 2010, and was by no means perfect, but even at that early phase of my writing career, it represented the type of author I want to be.
To serve notice in everyday stories. Notice to those who feel invisible: I see you. Notice to those who have no clue: This is what it is like.
Sometimes it’s packaged in a college soap opera. Other times it’s short stories and devotionals. And yes, sometimes it’s a story about a Black woman getting her “happily ever after.”
PIN IT!I believe that storytellers and writers are some of the most powerful people in the world since the beginning of time. The formats continue to evolve — from cave walls, scrolls, and books to radio, TV, and phone screens — but it’s all storytelling. The creation and curation of what gets shared and passed down from generation to generation, what’s deemed a “classic” and must-read fascinates me — these words and stories change hearts and minds and ultimately shape belief systems.
In this way, storytellers are historians and futurists capturing it all in the present. We don’t just tell you what was and what is, but what could be. And if you believe enough in what could be, if the words find their roots in enough hearts and minds, “it” becomes what is, and the cycle continues. Some people can’t “be” until they see, and that example can come through a fictional character as easily as it could a scientific fact. I’ve seen the long-lasting impact of a good story in my work as an author and as a public relations and communications consultant for the past 20 years. Words change the world.
“You write in order to change the world … if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.”
James Baldwin
I take this role seriously, even if my stories aren’t always seen as “serious work.”
I get the value of raising awareness of systemic racism and brutal periods of time like slavery, Jim Crow, and the industrial prison system. But don’t let that romance cover fool you into thinking it has less value.
When we focus so wholeheartedly on the sad stories, on trauma only, it limits the Black story and our culture. Black people, black lives are not a monolith — our stories shouldn’t be either. We can be (and are) saints and sinners, heroes and villains because we’re human beings, we’re people, not caricatures. We can fall deeply in love without the relationship being toxic. We can travel across the globe for fun. We can build empires. We can do stupid, foolhardy things, and it not count as a poor reflection upon our entire ethnic group. We can have happy endings too.
PIN IT!