Another blast in the culture war

The enemy's been lobbing howitzer rounds over the front line and right into our laps. Here's the latest in the slow destruction of black literature. Thong on Fire. Note what Publisher's Weekly says: Last seen during a short walk-on (or rather, incall) in Thug-a-Licious, Saucy Robinson returns with a vengeance in Noire's latest Harlem street tale, with Noire's most sophisticated plot to date. Born in Harlem to a black ex-G.I. father and a junkie Korean prostitute mother, Saucy (named Seung Cee by her mother and Sarita by her father) ends up in her uncle Swag's care by age eight, after her mother pimps her out to various men and her lesbian lover. Saucy's upstairs neighbor is a black girl named Tai, and the two are on-again, off-again frenemies for the rest of the book. Saucy, a total hottie, ends up attached to various drug dealers and working at a strip joint, the G-Spot. She breaks into doing rap videos, and ordinary-looking Tai, who is working for super-rapper Freedom Moore, hooks them up. Free wants Saucy to act straight, and if she can, her happiness might be assured. Beyond the sex, what drives the book is Saucy's vivid, trash-talking unreliability."

Now, whte authors can write a best seller about a mouse who dies and is reincarnated as a harried single mother cancer survivor's granddad, and they all live on a remote island off the coast of Newfoundland in 1942. Oprah might even endorse the thing. If we deviate from the norm, however--thug books, church lady romance, softcore porn, melodramatic "thriller" soap operas/saucy romps--I doubt you'll see Publishers Weekly so kind. As if to say: "Stick with your own 'gritty, edgey' stuff. Leave the real fiction [ie plotlines as described above] to us." Even if we can break out the current mold, we HAVE to write about race. Gotta be. Gotta do it. And it's not Al Sharpton or Jesse or Young Jeezy or Russell Simmons shaming us into doing it. It's a incarnation of "Charlotte York" from "Sex & the City" who works for a major publisher who's calling those shots. Come on now...fans and fellow authors. You know I speak the truth, eh?

When I speak of the front line, I speak of those well-meaning'd, "deep-thinking, culture-plus New Yawk literatti" like Kevin Powell who have begun a "new movement," a new ethos. Hurray for them. Yet they either shrink away, apologize, rationalize or hazelnut latte-deep think-crunchy-granola-I live in Ft. Green theorize away the truly base, bling and utterly unredeeming creature hip hop and hip hop culture has become; part and parcel of a greater decay that includes black literature, nonfiction...hell, the whole milieu of social, economic, political life. I guess as a man in my now mid 40s, I've got a foot in the old world and toe in the new, and I wish I had fins instead of feet so I could dive away from both! My choice of the artillery imagery is apt. The rounds are arcing high over the heads of the stalwart folk like Powell and decimating the rear areas. Areas they themselvs depend on for logistical support. All this while they write scholarly pieces and debate pithily on talk shows on PBS and attend neo-Soul concerts. The first four or five Hip Hop Summits that such folk empanelled mave have touched--delicately--on matters of culture, but around the seventeenth or eighteenth, well, it's microwave tripe and treacle now. More of the "white man and old-libe Civil Rights era folks don't get us." In the meantime the enemy--and as the cartoon character Pogo expound, that is a piece of us. Their supporters are the greedy/clueless/unscrupulous/craven/paternalistic members of the majority in publishing/music/TV/film/sports ownership/sports management/academia. Street fiction authors basking in the glow, like rappers and running backs--have they uttered a word in support of the kids in Jena, Louisiana, or for Glenarlow Wilson? I dare say we do...

...I dare say so for "we" in genre fiction, we who attempt to entertain AND educate, we who drink Yeungling rather than Pinot or kefir, we who aren't living in Ft. Green or on the cusp in LA and who see the so-called future and young professionals yapping at a Buckhead, Atlanta happy hour not about Kevin Powell's razor analysis, or Martha Southgate's prose, or the turn of a muscial phrase in a Jazz composition or the architecture of one of Cedric Smith's photographs. No, we are among them, hear them loudly proclaim Thong on Fire as the new Their Eyes Were Watching God, and the cut of Jay-Z's new linen suit, and bounce of Beyonce's tits. Or we see baggy-troued andtight-dressed young black folks in the park and they shout "Whatchew writing next?" and you tell them, and they say they'll buy it and they don't because they ned to cash to detail their cars or get new rims or buy new stuff at Marshalls for their cousin's babymama's kids. And we also hear the true rumblings of the streets. Not the theoretical & mythological musigs and machinations, but the practical ugly effect of nihilism and tragic disregard for social norms, for decency, for an education. Oh we confront or speak to or mentor or avoid or endure or are mugged/robbed/raped abused by folk who have not a clue who Kevin Powell is, but appreciate that black folks like him say that their behavior is due to poverty and no male (or female) role models and a disconnect. And when they do, they laugh and destroy each other to a Slim Thug soundtrack and maybe they'll read another literary tour de force penned by C-Murder as they sit on the toilet or wait for the No. 27 bus...

The shrapnel and the concussion's ripping us to pieces. Kevin and those of your ilk with the one-word or Afrocentric names or noms de plume, put down those lattes and those rites of passage essays and those scripts for yet another summit. Put on your goddamn helmets. Let's start firing back! And let's do it with the same bloodlust as is visited on us...

For today let's pray from the UK and this wave of terrorism. 7/7 anniversary is coming up. Billions for law enforcement solutions and intelligent intelligence...not one more m-f'ing cent for an idiotic war started on lies and cynical politics, that did nothing and solved nothing and made things worse. Bring the National Guard units home from Iraq. NOW.