Thankful For The Right To Be Black

This year I have something wonderful to be thankful for, the cover for my upcoming release, The Great Mann

I’m thankful because it’s gorgeous. And I’m thankful because it signifies an enormous amount of progress for me in my career and more importantly, within the publishing industry as a whole.

When I signed my first book contract way back in 2004 I dreamed about what my publisher would come up with for a cover. My agent stopped by their editorial offices and saw a mock-up before I did. I vividly remember her describing it to me: “They have your protagonist, Sophie, on the cover with big, coily, curly hair wearing a mini skirt. She’s holding a latte in one hand, a gun in the other and between her legs is the title Sex, Murder And A Double Latte.”

It sounded provocative to say the least. When the cover was finally sent to me it was exactly as my agent described with one glaring omission…

…they didn’t show Sophie’s hair.

I did like the cover as it was, still do. And as a brand new author I didn’t want to ask why the curls had been nixed.

I didn’t ask because I knew the answer but really didn’t want to hear it spoken.

But that truth I didn’t want to hear was eventually communicated to me, first in subtle ways then eventually spelled out: My book had the potential to appeal to a broad market but my publisher believed that might change if it became known as a “Black book.”

So there could be no Black person on the cover. They didn’t even want to give my book to Black periodicals for review. Cosmopolitan magazine ran an excerpt of one of the steamer scenes from the book alongside a photograph of a white couple.

The thinking was that if white readers saw a Black person on the cover or knew it was being promoted by Black tastemakers they wouldn’t even pick it up.

If you read Sex, Murder & A Double Latte, you’ll find out my protagonist, Sophie, is Black on page 2. It’s a fun book but I’m not sure my first three paragraphs are so enchanting they’ll override a lifetime of racist indoctrination by the time a reader gets to the fourth. The fact that my publisher thought they were is almost flattering.

And yet I can’t pretend that my publisher was imagining the problem. When I was touring to promote Sex, Murder And A Double Latte the things some people who were interviewing me for TV and radio said to me before the mics were turned on was…informative. One interviewer noted how surprising it was to her whenever I mentioned my protagonist’s race because, according to her, my characters “sound just like my white friends and I when we hang out together!” Another made a “joke” about my being biracial, suggesting that if anyone accuses me of “acting white” I can always retort “I half am!”

These people were part of the demographic my publishing house was worried about alienating, a demographic that didn’t view themselves as racist (despite some evidence to the contrary) but didn’t think characters with a different skin color could be relatable to them. I will say they seemed genuinely delighted to be proven wrong so…yay?

Here’s the thing, if readers won’t give my character a chance if they see her color before they read her words, what does that say about my own ability to be treated justly by society? Must I wear a hazmat suit to every first meeting, keeping it on until I say something witty enough to make my color irrelevant?

Also, I don’t want to pretend my color is irrelevant.

Loren Miller was a prominent civil rights attorney of the mid-20th century who I feature in The Great Mann. It was once suggested to him that he fight restrictive racial covenants in court on the grounds that there is no legal way of telling who does or doesn’t have “Negro blood.” His response was swift and fierce:

We’re fighting for the right of black people to be black. Not on the right that you can’t tell who’s black and who’s white.

With that I agree which is why I was heartened when an amazing publicist I had hired managed to get Sex, Murder & A Double Latte into the hands of several book reviewers at Black periodicals despite my publisher’s objections. My novel ended up being an Ebony Magazine Book Pick and while I don’t know what my publishing house as a whole thought of that, I know my editor was pleased and maybe even lobbied marketing and in-house publicity to change their thinking because for the second book there was slightly less push-back.

I successfully fought for Sophie’s right to be Black.

And now I don’t have to fight anymore. This cover for The Great Mann is the one my imprint, Crown, wanted. They are hopeful it will be featured in Black publications. If I objected that would be the fight. But I don’t object. Really, the only thing I had Crown change from the original cover-mockup they showed me was the hat.

Is Crown that significantly more enlightened than my original publisher? Only if you’re comparing Crown of 2024 to my original publisher of 2004 which wouldn’t be fair. I do believe that if I had sold Sex, Murder And A Double Latte in 2020 every publisher would want Sophie’s curl-crown on the cover. Things are different now than they used to be.

But that doesn’t mean they’re going to stay different. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that we were celebrating the Supreme Court’s ruling to legalize gay marriage and sitting down with our kids to watch Buffy’s friend Willow help slay vampires while pursuing a same-sex relationship with a witch. Now Clarence Thomas is openly suggesting that the Marriage Equality ruling be reconsidered and there’s a teacher in Florida being investigated for letting her class see an animated Disney movie that happened to have a single gay character in it. As I pointed out in my last post, social progress isn’t linear.

But right now I’m incredibly happy with the way my latest work is being presented to the world. I know how things used to be and I see the improvement.

I am thankful for this progress.

I am motivated to fight to maintain it.