While picking up my lunch today from the mall, I decided to stop in Borders (Books) Express. It's the smaller version of Borders. After leaving the magazine section, while imagining my magazine there I went and browsed a little. I got a little irritated after viewing the 2 shelved "African American" section. My irritation turned into disgust because the very small 2 shelf section looked just like my home book shelves. There was no organization what so ever. The books weren't categorized in any type of way. There was Heather Hunter's (a porn star) memoir next to Alex Haley's Roots.I just thought to myself, "Damn, that's not the same type of reading." Then I saw a pile of Zane's books, and it really brought me to my main issue. Zane writes erotica. So why wasn't her book in the erotica section? Why weren't any of the so called "African American" books just categorized with the rest of the books. I didn't see any Native American, Italian American, or European book sections. I know for a fact that every author in that section isn't necessarily African American. There were some authors that were from the Caribbean and other places of the world. They might as well just titled the section "Black Authors", or something a little bit more frank.I guess "African American" was candid enough. My questions and sentiments were: Is so called African American Literature so complex that it's hard to categorize with the rest of the books? or Maybe, it's just so damn good that it needs its own section?
You know I don't really like to complain about how other counterparts portray my race of people.......So I guess if I want to see my people's jewels categorized properly, then I better go to Truth Bookstore, or open up my own!
I agree as well!
I understand in the past that it was a good intentioned gesture to have an african-american section in a bookstore but now that so many of our authors are published, I think it's high - time to integrate our books into the rest.
thanks for bringing this up!
leah
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True Support
I agree and we need to be supportive of our own. We need to make sure the future of our stories survives the test of time.
Yep
I remember I was looking for Octavia E. Butler's vampire novel in the science fiction section, and me and the clerk were confused for a cool minute before we found it stuffed among some romance novels in the african american section! Annoying. And you're absolutely right, we have to support our community's independent/Black bookstores, or just go to amazon :)