Whiteness studies 102: Intended audience
Here's a pretty old post from the blog archives of Geekery Today; it was written about 18 years ago, in 2006, on the World Wide Web.
Quick quiz. Here’s a selection from an interview with novelist Danyel Smith:
cg: The writing style of [More Like Wrestling] is absolutely unique, definitely daring and I remember being a little surprised that it made it into print.
DS: For that I have to thank my editor, Chris Jackson. He is extraordinary. My agents really stuck by me as well. They sent MLW out September 10, 2001, if you can believe that. Three or four houses were interested, good houses, but I mean, no one was jumping though hoops to acquire this book. This is my first time saying this on the record, so I want to phrase this carefully I had lunch with this one editor, she took me to this fancy restaurant, and she told me I had to make a decision whether or not I was writing for black people or white people. And that I needed to have clearer heroes and heroines in the book.
Your assignment: before you follow the link to read the whole interview, see whether you can accurately predict the race of the novelist based on the fact that an editor subjected her to this kind of question.
I’ll bet you can.
(Link thanks to Kameron Hurley @ Brutal Women (2006-02-03): You Need to Make A Decision.)
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funny to see that interview quoted … nice, though.
it was a very strange conversation, that one. did I mention what race the editor was?