Writing for a Multicultural Market

For the life of me, I cannot understand why literary outlets love books in which a lonely white kid befriends an eccentric, older black woman. Or maybe the black woman isn't eccentric, she's just black and she needs a kid to care for because her kids have disappeared into the ether. I don't have anything against white kids. I work with an after school arts program. I love kids. Ethnic heritage doesn't matter. That's why these types of stories are disturbing. What are the authors really trying to say when they put outsider white kids with what I call a "mammy." You know what I'm talking about. Sue Monk Kidd got lots of press for The Secret Life of Bees. Elizabeth Berg, a favorite author of mine, penned, We Are All Welcome Here. I'm a prolific reader. I've tried to read these "best seller" books, but I couldn't get in to them. Frankly, I found the viewpoints insulting. Both the authors I've mentioned are fine writers, but it seems that they're aiming for a multicultural feel using outmoded models. Many "white" authors see multiculturalism as black and white. They are the ones most likely to fall into the "Mammy Syndrome." I understand. Demographics have changed publishing dramatically over the last ten years. Established authors are terrified they're losing touch with the market, so they rewrite Gone With The Wind and prove it. Many authors have almost no interaction with people of color. They're left with stereotypes from television and music. More disheartening than the authors who write these stories, are the publishers who green-light them. So what am I trying to say here? Simply this: if you're a white writer, carefully examine your worldview before writing a culture story. In her book, Letting Go, author Pamela Morsi does a fine job of inclusion. In the story, she has a secondary character who is bi-racial. Morsi does employ race as a tension device, but she doesn't rely too heavily on it. She also has some things to say that make sense. Morsi is a writer who gets it. Writers have a responsibility to the reader to examine their prejudices before broadcasting them to the world. If you're lucky enough to write a future classic, history will judge you. And the future looks increasingly multicultural. Oh, and for the record, black women are more than caregivers. We are lawyers, doctors, educators, business owners, friends, and lovers. Expand your storylines to include us in these ways and then you'll be saying something.