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IS BLACK WRITING AMERICAN LITERATURE?
LOYLE HAIRSTON

ERNEST J. GAINES is one of the best fiction writers in the United States today; Alice Walker's The Third Life of Grange Copeland was one of the better novels published in the United States in recent years. And yet these two fine writers are practically unknown because their respective publishers have failed to acknowledge the importance of their work. These same publishers have spent generous sums of money to publicize many white writers of far less talent. Can this be ascribed wholly to commercial considerations? How explain the fact that the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award judges rarely find black writing worthy of critical attention.

If Eudora Welty rather than Ernest Gaines had written The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, imagine the acclaim the book would have received. It would have been an immediate book club selection. On the other hand if Paule Marshall, one of our meticulous novelists, had written Them-Joyce Carol Oates' excellent novel-would she have received the National Book Award? I don't think so for one simple reason-Ms. Marshall is black.

Less critical observers will say that one shouldn't make such severe charges against the literary establishment at a time when black writing is receiving so much commercial attention. At a time when practically every bookseller has a stall of Black Writing on prominent display; when publishers are hustling everything about the "black experience" into print, however mediocre or badly written it is; when even a few black editors have been hired to help sift this bonanza of literary ore-at the beginning of the millenium one shouldn't be such an ingrate.

My concern however is not with the quantity of black writing being published (this "quantity" amounts to less than .001% of titles published) but with the literary establishment's peculiar attitude towards serious black writing. The term "literary establishment" is appropriate because the social views of many influential critics, editors,


Loyle Hairston writes fiction and essays. He is a Contributing Editor of FREEDOMWAYS.

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