Writers Return With True-to-life Fiction

Six African American women novelists hit bookstores, bringing mental illness, midlife crises and love into the spotlight.

By Paula L. Woods, Special to The Times, July 9, 2005

Coming off the Rodney G. King-inspired uprising of 1992, L.A. was, for a time, a pretty dismal place. But for African Americans, a bright spot emerged on, of all places, the local bestseller list of July 5 that year, where three novels written by black women jostled for position — Terry McMillan's "Waiting to Exhale" landed the top spot, Alice Walker's "Possessing the Secret of Joy" hit No. 6 and Toni Morrison's "Jazz" No. 8.

It would not be the last time multiple titles from black women (or men) graced national bestseller lists in a single week, but given the timing and circumstances, it was arguably the sweetest. Now, more than a decade later, history might just repeat itself. By next week, six contemporary African American women novelists will have new titles in stores this year: L.A.-based Bebe Moore Campbell, whose "72 Hour Hold" was published last week, Pearl Cleage, Valerie Wilson Wesley, Benilde Little, Connie Briscoe and McMillan, whose sixth novel, "The Interruption of Everything," is due Tuesday.

Although it's too soon to assign any meaning to this confluence of releases, to declare a sea change in the current state of black-themed publishing or even to put it all down to coincidence, the timing does offer the opportunity for the authors to consider their own successes, their readership and the state of writing on African American interests.

McMillan, more than anyone, is aware that the success of her book made black contemporary novelists the flavor du jour for some time with the New York publishing establishment. Although the current titles all have distinct voices, touching on such varied topics as mental illness, AIDS and midlife crises, McMillan has had concerns over the years that the industry's ongoing race to acquire the next "Waiting to Exhale" could cause a backlash.

"Publishers are no different than movie studios — they'll try to cash in on whatever the latest trends are," she says. Of the novels released shortly after "Waiting to Exhale's" triumph, McMillan says, "No way could all of those books be successful, and the writers were the ones blamed. It's unfortunate because a lot of young writers tried to emulate the four-girlfriends formula without bringing anything unique to their stories."

Publishers' influence

McMillan doesn't think black readers were that naive, ensuring that publishers' strategies would fail over the long run. They "ended up saturating the market with the same book."

Calvin Reid, news editor at the industry journal Publishers Weekly, points out that the market is still saturated but with a little more variety now. "For a while there, it was the 'sister-girl' novel, about various classes of black women, what they had to do to get a man and how all men were dogs. That was a real staple," he says.

Now, 13 years later, that market has changed. There are more voices and choices in black novels than there were in 1992, though African American titles have not kept pace with the growth in general fiction overall, according to a May report from New Jersey-based R.R. Bowker, a database service for publishers.

The company found that the proportion of novels being released in the United States with African American themes has declined from 1992. That year, 2.9% of 7,357 adult fiction titles published had stories considered of interest to African Americans; by 2004, preliminary data show that percentage dropping to 1.8% of the more than 25,000 titles released, says Andrew Grabois, senior director of publisher relations at the firm.

"Despite what looks like a full landscape [this summer], a lot of black writers have been weeded out," says Campbell. "I know several who have lost their contracts and are struggling. Publishing has changed; it's a brutal business."

Reid agrees to a certain extent. "Publishers are dissatisfied in general with the numbers that at another time would've seemed acceptable. The author that sells 20,000, 30,000 copies at another time would've seemed terrific, but now publishers aren't impressed. If one author is not being published, it's because publishers have turned to another author. Publishers are looking harder at urban fiction. We're seeing more quality titles, and you'll see that various publishing imprints focus directly on books for the black reader."

Indeed, Campbell and others who spoke with The Times remain upbeat about the appearance of so many African American fiction choices this year, citing wide-based reader support, aggressive author-driven marketing and the lingering afterglow of the achievements of McMillan and others as important success factors.

Voices all their own

Cleage is quick to acknowledge the commercial space McMillan's work created for black writers but emphasizes each has a voice of her own. "We are not Terry's clones. We are her peers, her community. Her work made it possible for us to identify our primary black, female audience as one who could support the work of an author who reflected their reality."

For Cleage, that means combining relationships, humor, suspense and serious social and political concerns in the four novels she's published. In "Babylon Sisters," released in the spring, she also addresses the issue of family secrets and the damage they can do to parents and children. Balancing so many elements is what Cleage believes makes her work defy convenient genre labels like "women's fiction" or "chick lit."

"I don't describe my work in genre terms other than to say that my female main characters are usually trying to do three things: tell the truth, figure out how to fall in love and stay there, and save the world and the [black] race." Cleage — an established playwright whose first novel, "What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day," was an Oprah Book Club selection — remains clear about her objectives as a novelist. "I want my books to be … complicated and funny and serious and hopeful all at the same time. I think that is the most accurate reflection of what I have experienced in life."

Support system

In turn, McMillan remains one of the biggest and most hopeful supporters of her colleagues, jotting down the titles of books admired by others to add to her own "to read" list and to recommend to audiences at signings and events.

"There's a thriving group of African American writers who can write circles around me, and I'm grateful to be alive and able to read their work," she says. "There have been a lot of young writers out here hoping to cash in on the market, but it was obvious who they were — they come and go — but the best writers are not [always] on the … bestsellers lists."Valerie Wilson Wesley, executive editor of Essence for much of the '90s, was inspired by the magazine's mission to empower black women when she began to write fiction. "The female characters in my books are usually independent and often self-employed or in the process of becoming so. They are always in the process of self-discovery."

She has penned five children's books, seven Tamara Hayle mysteries and now her third contemporary novel, released this spring, "Playing My Mother's Blues," which addresses the effect of a woman's passions on her daughters, the price they pay for her mistake and, ultimately, making peace within a broken family.

She has also just finished a stint as artist-in-residence in the fiction department of Chicago's Columbia College, an experience that allowed her to give something back and dig deeper into her own craft. "As I've helped young writers develop and refine their writing process, I've been forced to look critically at my own," she says. "I've learned as much as I've taught."

Past assignments at Essence also inform Benilde Little's latest novel. "I found out how big the 'daddy hunger' issue is for black women. I grew up with my dad in the house, so I took it for granted even though I knew people in my neighborhood and other places who didn't have their dads. I'd meet or read about all these really together women, at least on the surface, and their [sense of incompleteness] was generally due to lack of a daddy presence."

She used that as an issue for the protagonist of her second novel, "The Itch," and it figures into her examination of class, love, marriage and healing in "Who Does She Think She Is?" which published in May and which Publishers Weekly praised for its "balance between heartfelt intergenerational saga and sexy love story."

Although the characters who populate Little's fiction might be considered "black elite," they can't hold a candle to the wealthy denizens of the gated community of Silver Lake, a fictional African American enclave in Prince George's County, Md., and the location for "Can't Get Enough," a spring release and the second in Connie Briscoe's PG County series. Cited by the Boston Globe for its "satirical 'Desperate Housewives'-style edge," the novel speaks to readers hankering for a juicy, escapist read.

"Sometimes it's fun to see people who seem to have everything going for them mess up their lives," Briscoe says. "I guess it kinds of makes up for the fact that they have so much more than the rest of us do."

Briscoe, who broke onto the publishing scene two years after "Waiting to Exhale," freely admits the debt she feels to McMillan. "Once McMillan opened the floodgates, the stories came pouring in. There were many stories to be told and many ways to tell them because they hadn't been told up to that point." And Briscoe has done her share, writing novels about rich divas out to make mischief, young women seeking self-fulfillment, civil rights era family dramas and a multigenerational historical novel inspired by the life of her great-great-grandmother, a freed slave.

The tough topics

Campbell too covers a variety of terrain in her five novels, which have been set in the segregated South, sections of Philadelphia and View Park, the Los Angeles neighborhood she has called home since 1986. And while her novels have won accolades (including New York Times bestseller status, an NAACP Image Award, a Los Angeles Times 2001 Best Novel citation), it is her latest, "72 Hour Hold," that may be Campbell's most significant personally and, perhaps, professionally. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly called it a "powerful story," saying Campbell's writing had "compelling depth and detail." The novel concerns, in part, a mother's struggle to help her teenage daughter, who has bipolar disorder.

"I have a mentally ill family member who suffers from bipolar disorder," Campbell says. "In the black community, mental illness is shoved in the closet. I did that for a while. The thing about allowing stigma to rule your life is that nothing ever improves. Once I stopped being ashamed, I was able to get help for my loved one and myself."

Campbell's own experiences lend a sense of urgency to Keri's and Trina's journey through the mental health and legal systems that seem indifferent to the teenager's plight, while she also shows how family members' denial can sometimes exacerbate the problem. "Mental illness is such an unlovely illness," she says. "If it were diabetes, people would be supportive, but not so with mental illness. They question and judge the person with the illness — and their family: 'What went on in that household?' "

As Campbell sets out on a book tour that will take her to 18 cities over the next few months, she is grateful for the opportunity to spotlight important issues through her fiction while simultaneously entertaining her readers.

"I'm the daughter of a social worker. Social issues have always resonated with me. I integrate the issues and the romance to give my books an even flow of entertainment and reality. I want people to come away uplifted and moved. Life throws these issues at us all the time."

And those issues are not limited to a black audience.

"My core audience is black women," Campbell says, echoing the assessment of others interviewed, "but I have a following among black men and people of all races and both genders. I don't write for a color; I write out of who I am and what I'm about."

Which is how McMillan approaches her fiction, choosing relationships as the window into the struggles of women searching for something better in life. "How we interact and relate to others contributes in part —and sometimes much more than that — to helping us shape and form our sense of values, our moral fiber, our self-image, what we respect and cherish and even how we love," she says.

"I want to understand some of the harmful and negative things we do to each other so it might subliminally aid in our healing, or at least offer some hope."