Are there subjects black writers can’t write about?
I’m thinking about this after meeting one of my former students for dinner. She asked me about a story I had written, a story featuring a character loosely based on her. 
I tried to publish the story in a couple of different journals, but now I wonder if I should have. There’s a reason that story got rejected, and as a writer, it’s my job to figure out why.
A couple of possibilities: the end of the story features a rape, a rape that takes place within the black community, and perhaps there are some topics, because of history, because of more subtle—but still present—racial stereotypes, that black writers just need to leave alone? Or, perhaps, more likely, I simply do not have the skills (the depth and maturity) to write about this subject in a complex, truthful way?
There’s an argument to be made that black writers just shouldn’t go there. The first time I read Sapphire’s Push, I wondered if I were witnessing the Jim Trueblood-ing of literature (those of you who have read Invisible Man know what I’m talking about). We live in a society that still views black men as violent, dangerous, and overly sexual (and black women as emasculating, evil, jezebels), and music, movies, and magazines continuously pound those images into our heads. So it makes sense that we want to want to guard our images, to explore other truths, to tell the myriad other stories—stories of black men and women who fiercely love their families, who seek dignity and respect—that aren’t being told.
But do we leave behind the stories that don’t show us in a “positive” light? Truthfully, part of the reason that some “positive” books and movies about black people don’t receive widespread attention is that they’re not well-told; they don’t “keep it real” (the night I met a former student for dinner, one person in our party said that she fell asleep at a recent viewing of a “positive” black movie.) People are full of contradictions, and those contradictions are what make life interesting. Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King, Gandhi—these are people who made wondrous contributions to society, despite their personal failings. Shining a glowing light on black folks doesn’t generate good art, and it doesn’t begin to erase centuries of racial oppression. Our humanity comes not from creating work that is “positive” or “negative,” but by demonstrating fairness and honesty in our writing.
How do we do that? If we compare Sapphire’s Push with Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, we find answers. Both Push and The Bluest Eye deal with incest in the black community, but Morrison provides the MacTeer family, an in-tact working-class black family, and Claudia, a narrator who has just enough emotional distance from the main character’s (Pecola Breedlove) rape to provide depth and insight. We also get chapters in which Morrison explores Cholly’s thought process–why would he want to rape his own daughter? (So much so that when we read The Bluest Eye in high school, a student in my class grew upset with Morrison for “defending” Cholly.)
Still, do black writers have to have the genius of a Toni Morrison to write about sensitive topics? When I wrote my story, I struggled with creating competing several images of black men and masculinity in one short story. I’ll probably revise this story a few more times before I send it out again because, ultimately, I think the balancing act black writers commit to—this questioning of how to keep it real and show black people in a range of situations and development—makes our writing stronger, our stories richer. I’m also trying to be more gentle in my criticism of Sapphire, and other black writers. I know that, to paraphrase Audre Lorde, these writers are trying to tell their truths and write the best story they can, in the best way they know how.
So black writers are still climbing the racial mountain. But my favorite essay in the world—Langston Hughes’ “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain”–always gives me hope:
If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn’t matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too. The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn’t matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.
For black writers, our commitment to our humanity is part of our craftsmanship.
