Friday, September 9, 2005
The Race Card-Is It Electronic?

I got an email today that someone I knew had just landed a big contract with a big publisher in New York. Unsaid author and I began our trek toward book writing together, but apart. She wrote one thing, and I another. Our paths began with our mutual interest in science fiction/fantasy and as two African American women. However, it has seemed that our paths to publication forked at one point.

Yet by some standards, she has become a success and I, a lowly, self published/ebook pubbed author. She warranted the advance, and I the electronic route-which to many is evidence of my lack of writing skills and total cheapness. I mean really if I'm not good enough for TOR, then why read my work at all?

According to the Science Fiction Writers of America, I am not an author. I am not professional, but an amature, with four novels, numerous short stories, and articles published. Yet, because I am ebook published, than I am nothing more than a beginning writer--nevermind that I have been writing since I was 12 years old.

I can talk forever about the snobbiness that exists in publishing. Tonight I want to talk about race. As an African American, race is apart of my daily life, rather I acknowledge it or not. I am a science fiction fan, and I have been since I was six years old. However, when I go to CONs, I am often the only one of two or three African Americans there. Additionally, I am often the sole one on panels and book signings.

And I have to wonder, as I stroll through CONs getting weird looks from others and even stranger nods from fellow authors, that in a genre that promotes futuristic visions, where people dress up like Kligons, that I get the odd glances. I find it startling sometimes that my race, my color offends and shocks so many who read books about aliens, elves and cyborgs.

But I digress. Books. I write science fiction books and I have had more than one person walk away from my table when they found out that I was the author. Does this mean that sf fans are racists? No, I have met more than my share of good, solid, honest, sf fans who don't want to read my stuff as well as some that do. The genre as a whole is tough to write in, no doubt. Fans are hard to come by and not many people are reading any more.

My question is this...do I play the race card when I write? Should I write about things that apply only to African Americans? Is that even possible? Some believe that my writings, my stories are too generic. They sound too white. I honestly have had people say that to me at a con a year ago. I was told my stories didn't explore the African perspective.

But my point is "which perspective do you want?" There are millions of Africans and descendancts of Africans, with just as many tales. Mine are some of those...

I am a writer. I write stories. My stories come from my imagination, my experiences, and sometimes my life, (yes, sometimes from a bottle of beer), but never, never have they been faked and not once, have I played the race card.

Perhaps that is why I am still ebook published and self published.

Posted by Nicole Givens Kurtz 2005-09-09 23:18:39