The Great Black (and Multicultural) Hope

Hi Everybody,

Are you a writer? Have you been trying to land a publisher, or at least an agent? Heck, have you just hoped for a “real” response to your query, instead of receiving a copy of a copy of a faded rejection slip…or worse, receiving nothing at all, except the wind in your face?

If this describes you and your writing life, you’ve got to read this!

As a writer, you just want a fair shake, right? A chance to get your work out there and someday see it on the library and bookstore shelves, being perused by all the inquisitive minds that want to know.

Well, wonder of wonders…that day may be here. Almost.

In Publisher’s Weekly(http://www.publishersweekly.com/) blog, Elizabeth Bluemle, Co-owner, Flying Pig Bookstore in Shelburne, Vermont, talks about African American characters (or lack thereof) in publishing today.

Her blog is called ShelfTalker, and here’s a preview of what she had to say:

“It seems to me you’d have to have enormous resiliency, not to mention a generous sense of humor and/or deep ethnic pride, to grow up black in this country. One of the many things I hope will come out of having Barack Obama as President is publishers’ embarrassed realization that, heck, there’s not a whole lot out there in the children’s book world featuring kids like Malia and Sasha. That is, books with black characters who lead 21st-century lives in a vibrant world of ethnic diversity. Books that aren’t about slavery, civil rights, and the struggles of interracial relationships. Those stories are vital and must be told—both the brutal and the inspirational—but just as 2009 American Jewish kids don’t see themselves primarily in the context of the Holocaust, neither do black children live in the past. They, like all children, deserve to be active, lively participants in the children’s literature of the present…”

To read the rest of this astounding article, click here: http://www.publishersweekly.com/blog/660000266/post/1020047702.html

I certainly hope you celebrate this article as much as I did (and do). And after you finish celebrating, sit down, pick up your pen and start polishing up your manuscript.

Because it just may be that your day has finally come.

Best wishes and happy writing!

Rita Lorraine