+snapshot. 8th national black writers conference

overview and perspectives
+brook stephenson

The Eighth National Black Writers Conference (NBWC) convened at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, New York March 30 – April 2, 2006. The NBWC’s purpose is to be a forum for reading, discussing, and analyzing the literature created by black writers.  In addition, the conference addresses the issues, challenges and triumphs of black writers within their own communities and the broader American community. This particular conference was dedicated to the memory of two of our creative landmarks, Octavia Butler and August Wilson.  NBWC was humbly grateful to have as honorary committee chair Medgar Evers’ widow, Myrlie Evers Williams. In the Letter from the President, Medger Evers College President Edison O. Jackson noted “we know ourselves through the stories we create. It is our writers and artists who speak to us and for us…” And we do. As Dr. Brenda Greene, Director of the National Black Writers Conference noted with this year’s theme, Expanding Conversations on Race, Identity, History and Genre. But you missed everything, if you missed the first three panels on Day Two. Day Two brought everything into perspective.

The conference actually started Thursday evening with a reception but it was day one panel three that began it for me. I Missed panel two, Hip-Hop in the Classroom, but heard it brought some serious energy and dope emcees, notwithstanding panelists Abioyodune Oyewele, of the Last Poets, and Toni Blackman, U.S. Department of State appointed Hip-Hop Ambassador. Funny thing was, this day was a Friday and it just so happened that New York Public High School students had the day off. It was a nice sunny sixty-something degree day too. The youth gathered into a nice sized crowd and filled the Medgar Evers College auditorium off Bedford Avenue. They even stayed for the next and last panel of the day, Young Adult Authors: Readings and Discussions. Moderated by Dale Allender, the Associate Executive Director of the National Council of English, this panel was an open mike where students were encouraged to ask questions. They did, and the energy from hip-hop panel didn’t wane. It seems that this year’s conference was blessed by beginning with panels geared for the youth and having the youth come out.

Day Two’s theme mirrored the conference’s own, Black Writers Expand Conversations on Race, Identity, History and Genre. Panel one was History as Narrative in the Literature by Black Writers. Its panelists were Herb Boyd, Valerie Boyd, Christopher John Farley and Jewel Parker-Rhodes and was moderated by Adam McKible. After everyone introduced themselves, they opened up for questions from the audience. The main query at the start involved trying to decide how folklore that is considered fact but might really be fiction should be used in a memoir or biography. “It may be more interesting,” Christopher John Farley of the New York Times volleyed, “What does it tell you about the people?” 

After this point, the question moved to research and sources. Herb Boyd cautioned everyone about Internet information being authentic factual sources noting that it is “a realm where fact and fiction are confused.” As always, primary sources are the best sources and when offering accounts of our lives and times, documentation usually validates the oral traditions we hold as truth. Just tell our stories right. Not to ignore historical fiction, some questions were put out about how to write that as well. But regardless of all the obstacles, we still should push the envelope on this. Why? They are stories we should be telling even if we weave facts in and out of them. We have always weaved fact and fiction. Edward P. Jones’ book The Known World is 100% fiction but you can’t say it couldn’t or didn’t happen because of the plausibility of it. Some blacks did buy their way out of slavery and some blacks did own slaves.

Panel two, The Paradox of Race and Identity in Literature by Black Writers.  Excellently moderated by Linda S. Jackson, the panelists were Mohammed N. Ali, NBWC Co-founder Elizabeth Nunez, Emily Rabateau, and Ishmael Reed. It got kind of ugly in this one for a minute.  One panelist didn’t feel her book was getting the proper exposure in African-American literature sections because of the large number of multi-ethnic characters she had in the book. Her perspective sparked comments from the crowd and the panel about writing fiction with multi-ethnic characters and having publishers say that the books are not “black” enough or aren’t interesting enough too be mainstreamed because the author is black. It got pretty heated but Ms. Nunez quickly brought things home saying the black/colored/minority experience is not just about us but about everyone we ever come in contact with (see Blink by Malcom Gladwell for more details). One writer in the crowd tried to deny she wrote about black people or considered herself a black author. Nunez wouldn’t let that fly but the way she didn’t let it fly was everything.

Nunez: “Do you have people of color in your book?”
Black woman who doesn’t write black stories: “Yes but…”
Caribbean writer who writes about black people: “Stop. Do you have people of color in your book?”
Student: “Yes, but I have so many people…”
Teacher: “Stop! DO YOU HAVE PEOPLE OF COLOR IN YOUR BOOK? I’m trying to change how you think. If you have people of color in your book you are talking about black people. It doesn’t matter who else is in there, you are black and whatever your experience is, it is a black experience.”

This is the paradox. Whereas Nunez noted that she saw herself in classic European works, so should Europeans be able to see themselves in works by black writers as well. Our writings are most often placed in a box, when you go outside that box it’s sort of hard for others to cope. As writers of color, we have stories, perspectives and interactions with all races and creeds and to assume that we cannot tell a story that includes credible three- dimensional characters of other races is wrong. What, integration didn’t happen to us? People of color do not travel or have international friends? Integration did happen. People of color do travel globally. We write about everyone as well or as poorly as others write about us. So what’s the problem? It’s just not something that is published regularly or often. I guess we need to take Nunez’s approach and change the way publishers think too.

The Speculative Fiction panel dedicated to the memory of Octavia Butler was next. The panelists were Samuel R. Delany, Tannarive Due, Sheree Thomas and Walter Mosley. Their directive was to explore what the rise in this genre reveals about society, search for a meaning in Black speculative fiction and consider the future of the genre. Well, Samuel R. Delany went first. As one of the pre-eminent writers of our generation he should have. He brought it all into perspective when he said, “My grandfather was a slave. Not my great-grandfather, but my grandfather.” He spoke about Butler as one of her instructors and friends, he related his first impressions of her and those of the last time he saw her alive. He moved from that into his own tale and interaction with the nomenclature of Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Fantasy and everything else in the genre. Tannarive Due stepped up next and began to relate her background and life in writing as well as her own interaction with Butler. Sheree Thomas went next.  And just when I was thinking, “I sho nuff wouldn’t want to go after Tannarive Due,” she had me wrapped up in her own tale of success with her Dark Matter Science Fiction collections and conversation on how Butler was one of her first active supporters.

After her, Walter Mosley sidled up to the mike and started into a story that had everyone hooked. It went something like…

“So Harry Belafonte called me up one day and said my presence was needed at a meeting of the elders. I didn’t want to go because, well, I’m not that old but when Harry Belafonte calls, you don’t say no.”

Then.

and FOI walking around. But hey, these types of meetings have always been going on. Martin Luther King Jr. used to be at them all the time.”

Somewhere after that.

“Harry related a story to me one time. He says ‘Martin leaned over to me one time and said, Harry, I’m afraid.’

Pause.

“Afraid of what?”

Pause.

‘I’m afraid, we are integrating into a burning house.’

Pause. Pause.

“It was real quiet”

Pause.

“Then someone in the room with King said, ‘why don’t we let it burn to the ground?’

Pin drop quiet pause.

“That’s speculative fiction –taking away what you know and dealing with what’s left. If all the white people disappeared and there was nothing but black people… what, all black people would all of a sudden get along? If there were no more men in the world just women, what would happen then? Women wouldn’t have wars?”

And there it is. The most mind blowing thought is that when you erase everything you know and deal with what’s left, you have our own post colonial, post slavery African history. Who could have imagined that? In this light, everything we write is speculative fiction like Toni Morrison, Colson Whitehead, Caryl Phillips, Matt Johnson and Walter P. Jones to name a few. Each in his and her own right has bent what we know to be true to what could be true and let their imagination and talent run with it. We imagine and create our lives from what we are given. We are speculative by nature. Fiction is what we do at times to make sense of fact and circumstance.

There were three other panels this day and a film screening of “The Gilded Six Bits” which was adapted from Zora Neal Hurston’s short story with the same title. The evening wrapped with a VIP dinner program and a reception with light live jazz musical accompaniment. Tannarive Due and her husband danced, authors laughed among themselves, the new Masters of Fine Arts program for Medgar Evers College was revealed and a city councilman announced his bid for Congress. The next day was filled with workshops on poetry, fiction and reviewing black books; a panel on black publishing and the closing of the conference itself. All in all, everyone who participated walked away with more than they bargained for. Writers buoyed other writers. Everyone made new contacts and the conference definitely expanded conversations on race, identity, history and genre.

For more information about the National Black Writers Conference or any of the panelists mentioned, go to http://www.mec.cuny.edu/nbwc