A Coat of Many Colors

I’m so excited about this challenge! Thoughts about this subject have been ruminating in my head for years.

I have contemplated the millions earned by author James Patterson for his series of books about black detective Alex Cross. In a conversation, from Along Came A Spider, Detective Cross is talking to his BFF, John Sampson who says, “Mornin’ brown sugar. You up, aren’t you?”. Because that’s how black folks talk, right? Am I right? Do we even know what Alex looks like, after several books, other than he is a man of color? Nope. But he is perfection as a man who is well educated, cares for his children and his Nana, volunteers at a soup kitchen, hunts down the bad guys, etc.

I then reflected upon another large earner, Stephen King, and his magical negroes in

The Shining

The Green Mile

The Stand

My man. Granted, none of these magical folks are vetted as characters with full lives. They’re too busy saving the world for….well, you know.

The book “Floating Worlds” was written by author Cecelia Holland and published in 1975. I’ve read it multiple times. The heroine is a brown woman who is intelligent, strong, and, driven to win at all costs.

(You is kind, you is smart, you is important!)

After reading her book for the 4th time I reached out to the author because of its singularity from her historical writings. She actually responded explaining she was influenced by the late sixties and early seventies. Violent race riots with ferocious police dogs, water spewing in heavy volume from fire hydrants.

My favorite book of all time, “Childhoods End” by Arthur C. Clarke was published in 1953. Spoiler alert if you haven’t read it and plan to; the last human being on earth is a brown man watching the earth transform in spectacular fashion!

Bottom line.

Creatively we should not be bound by our ethnicity to write only about people in our genetic tree.