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Black male authors: smart, sexy & successful
Ebony, Dec, 2002 by Nikitta A. Foston
Walter Mosley, author of 13 books, including Bad Boy Brawly Brown, featuring the memorable Black hero, Easy Rawlins, dispels the myth that Black men don't read. "Black men don't read The Scarlet Letter, or Vanity Fail, or books that they feel ignore them or characterize them to a point where they are not real," says Mosley. Regarding his books, he says, "You can learn a lot about the history of Black people, about how Black men think, how Black men try to deal with their lives, their women, each other and their children. I find it necessary to write about Black male heroes," says Mosley, whose screenplay, Dark Angel, was originally considered by Tupac Shakur and is now in the hands of Mos Def. Recently re-released were six of Mosley's classic novels, each containing a story from his new collection of short stories, Six Easy Pieces. Mosley's African-American response to the "war on terrorism" titled What Next? is also slated for release. "Everybody seems to think that addressing the human condition is such an unusual thing, but at one time, if you weren't addressing the human condition, it wasn't literature."
Omar Tyree, author of nine books and 2001 NAACP Image Award winner for Outstanding Literary Work of Fiction for his novel, For the Love of Money, is also addressing the African-American condition, tackling timely political and social issues. "The NAACP saw that I was trying to do something different. I was in alignment with the advancement of colored people by trying to advance the mentalities on the stuff we read," says Tyree, who refuses to deviate from pertinent issues. "I have to write passionately about what I feel, not about what the crowd wants at that moment." The married father of two sons is currently working on a 16-book children's series, while promoting his spoken word album, Rising Up, produced through his companies, Hot Lava Records and Hot Lava Entertainment. Under his pen name The Urban Griot, Tyree performs on The Power of the Spoken Word Tour, showcasing his poetry works and more hard-core fiction.
The success of front-runners like Harris, Mosley, Dickey and Tyree has opened new roads for male writers across the country. Stephen L. Carter, Yale professor and author of nine nonfiction books that tackle everything from religion to politics, recently debuted his first novel, The Emperor of Ocean Park. Chris Benson, author of Special Interest, is creating a name for himself in the competitive field of mystery and suspense writing. Michael Baisden, author of God's Gift to Women, has penned four novels, carving a niche fin, himself as an outspoken expert on relationships, and Gary Hardwick recently released his fourth novel, Color of Justice. "The word about a good book will get around fast," says Baisden. "The word about a bad book will get around twice as fast. So, you have to write well and you have to grow as a person in order to grow in your writing."
Despite their overwhelming popularity, some critics argue that the new generation of authors is primarily entertainment-oriented, unlike the James Baldwin generation and the Richard Wright generation. But the new literary leaders say such comments are unfair and that they are crafting a new aesthetic for a new generation of men and women. It should be noted that a number of male writers, including Haki Madhubuti (Tough Notes: A Healing Call for Creating Exceptional Black Men), Lerone Bennett Jr. (Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream), Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (The Bondwoman's Narrative), Tavis Smiley (Keeping the Faith: Stories of Love, Courage, Healing and Hope from Black America) and Cornel West (The Cornel West Reader), continue to produce timeless essays and popular books on history, politics and social analysis.
