When I first edited urban fiction, like most new endeavors, I stumbled upon it. But as a former social worker, I’ve always found it interesting how women of color cope in desperate situations. As I read through different manuscripts, I recognized the voices I had known over the years in my own life, in different foster homes, or in my inner-city casework.
Although I recently finished my nonfiction book, Heal thy Soul, 365 Days of Healing for Women of Color, to be published by Urban Books in November 2008, I want to tackle urban fiction.
As a story editor for some of today’s best-selling urban fiction writers, I’ve learned a lot about urban fiction.
I can speak from both sides of the fence, both as a writer and as an editor.
As urban writers, we sometimes get bad press. I would like to clarify something.
Not all urban writers are writers of street fiction. This genre is sometimes known as ghetto lit or street lit or hip hop fiction.
Some people say that there is too much drama, even in the female line of urban fiction, and not enough literary literature.
Well, as an editor, that depends on how you look at it.
What is the theater?
I once read that drama is danger mixed with opportunity.
Writing about people of color living in urban settings is going to be fraught with danger.
Just to think about some of the dangers these urban characters face, start the moment the characters get out of bed. Any day you could end up homeless, a victim of violence, or foreclosed.
So how do we create these elements in our stories?
Showing the opportunities (limited or lost) that we have to achieve the American Dream and the danger involved in trying to achieve it.
For some people, they go the nine to five route. For others they go down the path of crime. But all the characters, in search of the American Dream of happiness, will embark on a journey.
This journey involves subtext.
My definition of subtext is what happens below the story.
The dictionary definition is this:
1. The implicit meaning or theme of a literary text.
2. The underlying personality of a dramatic character implied or indicated by a script or text and played by a performing actor.
My story “Katrina Blues,” an anthology novel, Never Knew Love Like This Before, (published by Urban Books-Urban Soul June 2007) is about a cross-section of society.
The protagonist, Deni Richards, is a thirty-something Los Angeles attorney who ends up facing discrimination at a restaurant, racial discrimination by the police department, and disparity in treatment at her job.
Though she believes she has achieved the American dream because she drives a Mercedes, is the most successful girl in her family, and owns her own condo in Santa Monica, California, at the end of the story she learns some hard truths about being African. American citizen in this country.
She ends up getting an up close and personal taste of reality when she opens her home to displaced saxophonist Coleman Blue and his family in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
I find a lot of meaning about the American Dream when I read urban literature and it’s not always on the surface of the story.
