By: Wayne Jordan
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/wayne.jordan.94695
My first book, Capture the Sunrise, went on sale in
November 2005, the same month BET sold its imprint of African-American fiction,
mainly romance, to Harlequin Enterprises. I was ecstatic. I was finally a published author and I was
writing for my dream publisher. Who doesn’t want to write for Harlequin? For
the next seven years, I lived my dream.
I wrote stories I loved with characters who looked just like me. They met, fell in love, had some trouble here
and there and then married and lived their Happy-Ever-After. For a while, I was happy and then…I started
to feel the first pangs of discontent. In
the meantime, I was dealing with deaths in the family, students who committed
suicide and discovering I not only had Diabetes but Hypertension. My writing didn’t make me happy anymore. I’d lost my spirit and my desire to write
romance.
I love writing romance,
I love the industry…well, some aspects of the industry. I was a black man writing romance and somehow,
I felt underappreciated, that because I was a man, I could write a romance, but
just not as well as my female counterpart…and then finally, I was dealing with segregation
in publishing - the belief that the black romance authors were considered less
than their counterparts of other color,
that the stories we wrote were stories for people just like us, people of color
and that very few romance readers read romance novels with hero/heroines of
color. While I worked for a ‘big’ publisher, as a romance author, I didn’t feel
big and as a male romance author, I felt even smaller in the scheme of things.
It was at that point I
didn’t get a renewed contract and discovered that the only category romance line,
the line I wrote for, the only line for black authors, was closing.
My solution is a simple
one. Yes, close our line, but integrate us into the wider Harlequin portfolio.
Don’t segregate us, but give us the same opportunities as all the other
authors. Treat us with respect and let us know that we matter. Promote the
hell out of our books so that readers know that we matter to you.
Organizations like RWA
have finally started to step it up and make their position about diversity clear. But publishers and organizations alone cannot
change the climate. Readers and authors
alike must speak out about the need for diversity, must not just give ‘lip
service’, but add authors of color to their reading. Years of publisher attitudes to romance with
protagonists of color has been transferred to readers. The subtle messages that publishers convey by
treating us differently is not lost on potential readers.
I love my second career
(I’m a teacher by profession), but so much must change for authors of color,
like me, to get their just reward. Each of us, publishers, writing
organizations, authors and readers, must play a part. One of my favorite poets penned these words:
No!
I will not still my voice!
I have too much to claim
If you see me looking at books
or coming at your house
or walking in the sun
know that I look for fire.
I have learnt from book, dear friend,
of men dreaming and living
and hungering in a room without light
who could not die since death was too poor
who did not sleep to dream but dream to change the world
And so, if you see me looking at your hands,
listening when you speak, marching in your ranks
you must know,
I do not sleep to dream but dream to change the world
listening when you speak, marching in your ranks
you must know,
I do not sleep to dream but dream to change the world
Martin
Carter - Looking At Your Hands.
When I was invited to
write this blog, my first thought was to focus on being a male romance author,
but diversity is an issue in publishing which cannot be ignored. I will not
ignore it and like the poem says, “I will not still my voice!”
My next release,
PROMISE ME A DREAM, is book #7 in a very special twelve
book series called: Decades: A Journey of African-American Romance
which, while romance, highlights the African-American Experiences in the 20th
Century and two decades of the 21st Century.
