Read Online The World Has Changed by Alice Walker - Free Book Online
Authors: Alice Walker
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said, “That’s wrong! You can’t do that. This is Miss so-and-so’s child.” There was a time when the community looked at this kind of behavior with the eyes of judgment. But today black people see without judgment. They think that to be nonjudgmental is progress. But in fact, it isn’t when your non-judgment means that people suffer. And they do because there is no one saying with the whole authority of the community that what you are doing is hurting us as a community.
C.T.: Do you think that black women are capitalizing on an antagonistic press, as Ishmael Reed said not too long ago?
A.W.: I read somewhere that Reed said he had sold only eight thousand copies of his last book, and he was upset. He felt that if he had been a black lesbian poet he would have sold many more. But I have bought
nearly all of Reed’s books, and I did not buy them because he is a black lesbian poet. I bought them because he is writing about the black community, presumably from inside it. Since I am the black community, I represent his audience. And it is this audience that is ultimately important.
In any case, I think anybody can only write . Writing or not writing is not dependent on what the market is—whether your work is going to sell or not. If it were, there is not a black woman who would write. And that includes Phillis Wheatley. Think of her antagonistic market! I mean if you really thought about the market, you would probably just take a job canning fish. Even the most successful black women writers don’t make a lot of money, compared to what white male and female writers earn just routinely. We live in a society that is racist and white. That is one problem. Another is, we don’t have a large black readership; I mean, black people, generally speaking, don’t read. That is our main problem. Instead of attacking each other, we could try to address that problem by doing whatever we can to see that more black works get out into the world—which, for example, Reed does with his publishing company—and by stimulating an interest in literature among black people. Black women writers seem to be trying to do just that, and that’s really commendable.
This brings to mind Ntozake Shange’s book Nappy Edges , which I just read and liked a lot. It has a wonderful introduction where she refers to a speech she made at Howard. She talked about how black people should try to relate to their writers and permit them the same kind of individuality they permit their jazz musicians. It’s beautifully written, and funny, and I’m sure the audience loved what she was saying. Black women instinctively feel a need to connect with their reading audience, to be direct, to build a readership for us all, but more than that, to build independence . None of us will survive except in very distorted ways if we have to depend on white publishers and white readers forever. And white critics. If Reed only sold a few thousand copies of his book, he might look at who controls publishing first, and then he might look at who is buying his stuff or not buying it, in order to determine whether there is some serious breakdown in communication between him and his potential readers. Although I have all of his early books, it gets harder to lay out money for books that speak of black women as barracudas. As black women become more aware of sexism—when, in fact, they are as sensitive to sexism as they are now to racism, and they will become so —then a lot of black male writers are going to be in serious trouble. You notice we do not buy books by William Styron in droves, either.
In any case, to blame black women for one’s low sales is just depressing to think about, considering the sad state of our general affairs. Skylab is falling; the nukes are leaking; we’re running out of oil and gas; there’s a recession. People don’t have jobs. Most writers I know, white and black, live with an enormous amount of anxiety over just getting by. That
C.T.: Do you think that black women are capitalizing on an antagonistic press, as Ishmael Reed said not too long ago?
A.W.: I read somewhere that Reed said he had sold only eight thousand copies of his last book, and he was upset. He felt that if he had been a black lesbian poet he would have sold many more. But I have bought
nearly all of Reed’s books, and I did not buy them because he is a black lesbian poet. I bought them because he is writing about the black community, presumably from inside it. Since I am the black community, I represent his audience. And it is this audience that is ultimately important.
In any case, I think anybody can only write . Writing or not writing is not dependent on what the market is—whether your work is going to sell or not. If it were, there is not a black woman who would write. And that includes Phillis Wheatley. Think of her antagonistic market! I mean if you really thought about the market, you would probably just take a job canning fish. Even the most successful black women writers don’t make a lot of money, compared to what white male and female writers earn just routinely. We live in a society that is racist and white. That is one problem. Another is, we don’t have a large black readership; I mean, black people, generally speaking, don’t read. That is our main problem. Instead of attacking each other, we could try to address that problem by doing whatever we can to see that more black works get out into the world—which, for example, Reed does with his publishing company—and by stimulating an interest in literature among black people. Black women writers seem to be trying to do just that, and that’s really commendable.
This brings to mind Ntozake Shange’s book Nappy Edges , which I just read and liked a lot. It has a wonderful introduction where she refers to a speech she made at Howard. She talked about how black people should try to relate to their writers and permit them the same kind of individuality they permit their jazz musicians. It’s beautifully written, and funny, and I’m sure the audience loved what she was saying. Black women instinctively feel a need to connect with their reading audience, to be direct, to build a readership for us all, but more than that, to build independence . None of us will survive except in very distorted ways if we have to depend on white publishers and white readers forever. And white critics. If Reed only sold a few thousand copies of his book, he might look at who controls publishing first, and then he might look at who is buying his stuff or not buying it, in order to determine whether there is some serious breakdown in communication between him and his potential readers. Although I have all of his early books, it gets harder to lay out money for books that speak of black women as barracudas. As black women become more aware of sexism—when, in fact, they are as sensitive to sexism as they are now to racism, and they will become so —then a lot of black male writers are going to be in serious trouble. You notice we do not buy books by William Styron in droves, either.
In any case, to blame black women for one’s low sales is just depressing to think about, considering the sad state of our general affairs. Skylab is falling; the nukes are leaking; we’re running out of oil and gas; there’s a recession. People don’t have jobs. Most writers I know, white and black, live with an enormous amount of anxiety over just getting by. That
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