Rap is not the Sound of [White] Music. And it's Jailing our Black Youth.

While a minority of America accepts this...

Potentially, my blog post title alone has jeopardized the patronage of one-third of my readership, as I have thrown down the gauntlet in opposition to a part of my own Black culture, and to America's youth, of all races, who have adopted gangsta rap as their musical mascot.  In New Hampshire, white boys, in cars, run up alongside me, blasting gangsta rap; they lift weights to it on their smart phones in the gym, and get testy when asked to lower the volume (when my squash partner tells them they're interrupting our game).

It's always nice to be accepted by your own people, so their rejection of my blog's premise might sting a bit, but I love my people too much to care about what they think about me. I also admit to being a hypocrite because I originally embraced the PG-versions of Lil Kim on the radio before I realized she was actually X-rated (I had to give the "Hard-Core"-titled compact disc away; it just hurt my sensibilities too much). I have since wished that she could put her masterful beats and unique sounds to something more uplifting than extolling

...The Majority of Americans Accept This

having sex with "King Kong," and being someone else's P-_S-S-Y.  I have subsequently watched with horror at the proliferation of gangsta rap and believe it has contributed to the demise of our Black culture, and our vilification, by white America's, and, therefore, everybody else's consequential fear of Blackness.  What any sane observer might see as an inside joke, of middle class, well-spoken black actors playing thugs (Have you listened to 50-cent speak? He could be an English teacher, with his perfect grammar), instead, has played out in disastrous ways as white men show an inability to distinguish fact from fiction--and they both jail and kill our young Black men, our erstwhile kingpin rappers.

Over two decades ago, I wrote a screenplay, called "Poetic Rap," about the relationship between two teenagers, a girl and boy, the latter of whom loved rap music. I tried to make the argument, at the time, before gangsta rap was the norm, that the poetry of rap was no different than the sonnets of Shakespeare or Robert Browning, only showing more contemporary metaphorical ways to express love and romance, and, yes, carnal lust. That's before Hollywood let loose the F-bombs and curse words on cable that allowed all of us to witness what was once kept private. Now, swearing is part of our everyday lexicon. And Rap is one of its prime ambassadors.

Not being a psychologist, it's hard for me to speculate as to why rap has embedded itself in Black culture, but I would guess that there is a certain creative satisfaction in expressing one's thoughts in iambic pentameter.  As a child, when I saw "West Side Story" on television, in suburban Los Angeles where I grew up, and when the Crips and the Bloods were just neighborhood cliques, I figured it was because they had seen the movie.  The whole gang thing seemed relatively juvenile back then: it was turf control--don't come on this street or wear this color. The lawns were all manicured in those black neighborhoods. There were mostly two-income families. When we drove down Piru street in Compton, venturing from Carson, our  neighboring suburban city, we would drive, ducking our heads for fear we might get shot at.

There was also the rumor was that one should never flash his or her car lights in certain neighborhoods, to avoid inviting trouble.

Another falsehood about the hood.

Urban legends about suburban strife.

Robinson: America's Bad Favorite Boy

Yeah. I'm a different generation, and I feel blessed to be so. I played the violin as a child, imitated Tina Turner in a church band, singing, "Come Together."  I was in the Philippines when Rapper's Delight surfaced, and in my far-away outpost would try to translate the lyrics into Cebuano when my posse of young boys would ask me what they were talking about. I had no idea it was called rap music, that it had taken America by storm, and that, thanks to Ronald Reagan, real singing would become a lost art, championed only decades later on reality TV shows where young people are forced to sing songs with lyrics and beautiful melodies, from back in the day, in order to become famous.

Black America started on its descent with the ascension of Ronald Reagan, a B-rated actor, who anointed himself the arbiter of what was the acceptable purveyor of American cultural greatness.

Celebrated thuggery

Let's not ignore the fact that his colleagues, James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson, lit up the screen with their thuggish ways, pushing grapefruit in women's faces, and being all around nasty guys.  But everybody understood when they did it--that it was only the movies. 






Blacks did not get the memo that only white thuggery can be fictional.

If you rap about gang life, you must be a gang-banger; a big irony, considering many rappers are the guys who are too small to be jocks. They would have been members in the band back in the day, or geeks. Some of them still are, truthfully--they spend their time writing poetry, then justify such a feminine trait by funking it up with sex and danger they can only sing about. Rap performances, themselves, are a contradiction in terms. The speaker doesn't have to look you in the eye, and often wears sun glasses, a hoodie, and a hat as protective gear.  The rapper can grab his crotch for security, hold the mic so it covers his face, and can talk and express in the most macho of manners--his  feelings.


Lenny Bruce and Jack Kerouac were controversial counter-cultural commentators back in the 50s, and started a brand that spawned many of the foul-mouthed comedians of today. Words aren't as potent when spoken by a white person, however.  It is not the beatniks and the hippies, now, or even conscious rap that's under attack. It's Black youth, with their pants pulled down almost to the ground, walking bow-legged, showing their defiance of... other Black people?  I'm not sure.  Somehow, seeing dark-skinned men espouse controversy is very threatening, until whites embrace it.  In fact, Hollywood, e.g., the music industry, has perfected the monster, and demands that rappers continue to dig our culture into depths of their demagoguery, and, seemingly, purposeful accelerated destruction of Black culture:

Convinced that tales of sex and violence were the most profitable among rap’s White consumer base, in the early 1990s, record companies began pressuring artists to focus on gangsta-style lyrics that were largely devoid of the kinds of social or political commentary that many ‘‘golden age’’ rappers provided (Kubrin, 2005; Weitzer & Kubrin, 2009). This pressure, combined with massive consolidation among record companies and radio stations in the years thereafter (Rose, 2008; Spence, 2011), has drastically limited the variety in mainstream rap music, with a marked lyrical emphasis on what Sharpley-Whiting (2007) calls the ‘‘‘pimp-playa-bitch-ho’ nexus’’ (p. xvii) or what Rose (2008) terms the ‘‘gangsta-pimp-ho trinity’’ (p. 13). Although there are still many rappers taking up overtly political causes—Lupe Fiasco, The Coup, Immortal Technique, Brother Ali, Talib Kweli, Jasiri X, Rebel Diaz, and Dead Prez, just to name a handful—these rappers are often relegated to hip-hop’s ‘‘underground,’’ where they can build loyal followings but rarely achieve the kind of exposure enjoyed by mainstream acts. As a result, some critics have suggested that mainstream (or ‘‘commercial’’) rap music is no longer a force of opposition. Whitlock (2012), for instance, goes so far as to call hip-hop ‘‘the lobby of the prison industrial complex,’’ while Rose (2012) argues that it’s ‘‘the cultural arm of predatory capitalism’’ (see also Gilroy, 2013).

https://webfiles.uci.edu/ckubrin/Rap%20on%20Trial.pdf?uniq=pihx9r

This is a dangerous proposition, in effect, because now, where words were once a nuisance, now they can put you in jail. Charis E. Kubrin, associate professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California, Irvine, and Erik Nielson assistant professor of liberal arts at the University of Richmond, have written about the disturbing trend of prosecuting rappers for writing lyrics that merely suggest criminal behavior. The quote above is excerpted from their work, worthy of intense scrutiny for its frightening implications.  My blog cannot do justice to the extent of their research, well-documented and presented in a cogent historical light. Their research should serve as a clarion call to rappers, and Black Americans who support the genre, to reign in the gangster hyperbole:  love your race but don't facilitate our increased incarceration because of a need to support "cool." Of course, there is the corollary of what has happened to law enforcement, and its fake-cop supporters that it fears the Black rapper to such a degree that it feels compelled to snuff him out, so deplorably--but that will be another blog post for a future novel.

I'm not sure whether life imitates art, however, I believe as Black Americans we are spooked by our own story, and now live in fear of each other. I dare not try to dissect Chicago's gang strife, and black on black crime, except to say Black Americans are a complex people, riddled with inherent inconsistencies and hypocrisies (some of which I readily admit).


A subplot in my own upcoming novel addresses the relevance of rap lyrics in a criminal investigation, but muddies the waters of potential culpability in my Louisiana setting where Whites and Blacks and so many other different races embrace rap music for its violence and overt sexuality.  Things aren't always what they seem. Would Eminem ever be prosecuted for his lyrics of misogyny and Oedipal rage should anything ever happen to his mother?

The cat is out of the bag, now, however, and it's not going back in, and, as a result, the cycle of hatred for rap and black culture has now pilfered into our educational system.  Public schools are penalized for not taming the wild, rap-obsessed youth, who must often look only to themselves to learn.  With music education only tepidly trying to make a comeback, there are several lost generations of kids who only know how to rap. They don't know music, they don't know melodies, so they sample music from back in the day when most Black male entertainers had really nice singing voices, played instruments, and knew four- and five-part harmonies. We all want to be noticed for our talents. I do not begrudge the innate desire for people to practice their craft. But I despair that bags of money are being placed into the outstretched hands of hungry kids who see faux gangsta rap as their only ticket out of anonymity.

I can only hope that American capitalism embraces Venezuela's socialist answer to the question of how to bring kids out from the shadows of poverty, crime and despair: teach them some damn music. Imagine where an already inherently, enormously talented people could go with music.

I am Black Woman. Hear Me...

#RHOA: Overseer of Black Female Slave Syndrome and Our Unwitting Self-Destruction

While the U.S. cowers in fear and trepidation of mustering the courage to fight the scourge that is I.S.I.S. or I.S.I.L. (or whatever appellation is used to describe the terrorists hell bent on creating their Islamic caliphate), Black women around the world, except those in Nigeria, are oblivious of what's going on outside of their general hemisphere--outside of "over there."

Black women are fighting our battles, on our own turf, but the plight of the Black American woman is dead front and center.

There are better analyses of our contemporary battles:  Mrs. Ray Rice, domestic abuse victim and devotee to her assailant; the fisticuffs of the "Basketball Wives" or "Atlanta Housewives," who use their own brand of domestic abuse in their aim to be relevant.  And many aren't even complaining because those reality television cases, though histrionic, are telegenic (who doesn't like to see wild women fight)? Black women of television are struggling for prime-time ratings (see the tempest that never was), but they doth protest way too much.  Most of us are fighting battles to be relevant in our daily lives. Period.

Black women are some of the most misunderstood, if not "the" most misunderstood species that has ever existed in contemporary civilization.  We are the creators of the human species (heard of "Lucy"?), we are the subject of Biblical lore (before Hollywood let Whites play African roles). We are lusted after, mostly behind closed doors, in cars, in streets, in bedrooms, and in cotton fields where our progeny sprang into our contemporary apotheosis as Negroes, coloreds,  Blacks, and African-American "hoes," "girls," "tricks," "shorties," "bitches"--any others out there I've forgotten?  Our big lips and butts were the stuff of ridicule, and are now the stuff of big money. We've been eclipsed by the White woman, who has perfected our Negritude in White face. We've been out-souled by a more visually pleasing imposter; yet it is we who are ridiculed for our "otherness."

While the White women triumphantly sang, "I am Woman, Hear Me Roar," some of us sisters were moaning while busily doing the heavy lifting, too tired to chime in while we did their labor. Yet, we have no manifesto to declare our lot as Black women. Our collective lament throughout the diaspora is only explained and heard using one adjective: angry.  The appellation is cartoon-ish, lacks depth, and is a stereotype, just like the N-word, that must be rejected for what it is: a blanket adjective used to describe a complex human being, capable of dissection, but, most often, spray-painted by a dismissive appellation instead.  Using the term "angry" to describe black women is the equivalent of describing crimson, mauve, carmine, or burgundy as simply red.  Black women are as varied as the colors of grass that we call "green," or the colors of the sea in many parts of the world; for those who have had the privilege of seeing seas unspoiled by pollution, somehow the color "blue" doesn't do them justice.

Nicki Minaj, born Trinidadian, now a disgrace
to Black American women

There are some writers, pundits, and so-called entertainers (see photo to the left) who seek to capitalize on the Angry Black Female concept-- some from the diaspora, but not historically from the United States--they are the new voice for Black America, without having had the same experience, because their immigrant heritages foist them into positions of prominence.  This country is for immigrants, and the last person anybody wants to extol is a self-aware, American Black child of slaves who is also female, except for Condoleeza Rice, who wore a happy grin on most occasions that she served her President.

Over the past twenty-plus years, I have introduced my own Black female concept to film and television, but each was changed and adapted to reflect Hollywood's preferred story about Black women:  we are stern judges or crazy crack-fiends: television writers use the stereotype for dramatic pull. And, well, there is some anger out there.  But that's only on the surface.  Underneath the anger is disappointment--in our lot in this life, in walking a solitary path while all other women are escorted.  Even Oprah Winfrey, a newscaster, at the time, had to hire her escort, now life-partner, to attend a gala event.  Even her claim to fame is that she is not angry, but spiritual. She forgives and forgets, embracing the now.  That's what America likes to remember.  The Now. Not the Past.   

Preach, Lorraine

My protagonists have and always will be Black women, if they are to be fictional characters. To this day, Lorraine Hansberry has written one of the few portrayals of Black womanhood that does our cause any justice.  My character is not as emotionally involved and exposed as the characters were in "A Raisin in the Sun." She is my contemporary Black woman: her arms are wide open for love, but on terms that don't sacrifice her own self-sufficiency and independence.  She is clinical, scientific, suspicious, and wary, but open to new experiences. In my novel, Dr. Lula Logan is vulnerable and alone, navigating her way through her new home, Louisiana, and feels very much an outsider.  She will feel pulled in two different directions by two Black men who are unavailable, each in his own way, but who still draw her into their respective romantic tentacles. Her love life is only subplot, secondary to her scientific self, as she becomes embroiled in a police investigation in the small parish.  She is a metaphor for all Black women who aren't models, or who don't wear blonde hair in a desperate stab at being defined by another standard of beauty, therefore jumping the broom to leave our ranks for acceptance by another peer group to which we will never truly belong, and who will always unwittingly one-up us by their ability to out-do us by virtue of their being coveted by almost every man, no matter what his hue.

Until Black women find the means to tell our own true story as women, not angry females, without Hollywood editing by white men or black slaves of White thinking, we will forever be marginalized by Hollywood caricatures and adjectives that objectify, reduce us to stereotype, and that will only further debilitate our position as citizens in our own American backyard.

ISIS or ISIL are vile terrorists. However,  I dare say that Black American ideological self-loathing and its consequences will do more to hurt this country than any Islamic religious jihad fought overseas.

Here's an excellent post about prejudicial stereotypes of Black women

http://www.ferris.edu/JIMCROW/sapphire/

and an introduction to the concept of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, which has begun a nation-wide dialogue about how slavery informs Black American behavior to this day:

http://joydegruy.com/resources-2/post-traumatic-slave-syndrome/


 

Sucks My Grammar....

This kinda sums me up

I don't get my writing.

Sometimes words I don't even think I know find their way into my writing vocabulary, and I am puzzled as to how they got there. When I'm in doubt as to their source I find my dictionary and marvel that I actually knew the word I had to look up. I give myself a self-congratulatory nod and thank the literary Gods for throwing me a bone, giving me the fleeting feeling that I am a writer.

Then I am reminded of my core belief that big words are for people who really, really, really know how to write. Only those who have mastered the art of sentence construction have the right to play canonical games with their intellectual brethren--of choosing those hard to pronounce words used to puzzle their "known" readers for whom they show their prowess.  I stand aside for those writers, and let them pass. It's taken me most of my life to realize that, even to me, English is my second language, though it is my one and only native one, too.

As a Black American with no known contemporary cultural ties with my ancestors in Africa, or Native-Americans, or other non-English speaking Europeans in my bloodline--I've only had occasion to learn English.  That was until I became fascinated with the languages of other people, and started learning "theirs." As a child, I could not fathom why I didn't have a separate language to speak with my parents, like my Japanese, Mexican, Samoan, German, and Portuguese childhood playmates, whose parents spoke in either broken English or with a heavy accent. Their languages fascinated me. I even made up my own to speak with my sister, a gobbledegook of gibberish interspersed with English words that allowed us to actually understand each other (Example: "kudosudomapalogo-go-to-the-store?").

When I had the opportunity to learn Spanish in junior high school, I jumped at it, and found an ease of learning languages that has informed my career choices and my general interests as a human being. I speak a modicum of French and can wind my way around Italian and Portuguese, falteringly. However, two of the languages I actually learned to speak, Cambodian and Cebuano, do not rely on the same sentence structure as English, which made them much easier for me to learn. All I had to do was figure out the meaning of the words, and somehow, string them together, and I could get the message across.  But I can't say that knowing more languages has helped my writing.


Even before my travels, my shortcomings had been pointed out to me by two professors:  one who admonished me that my ideas were brilliant, but not capable of comprehension; the other who scolded me about using words I didn't understand (I used "blitzerig" for blitzkrieg in a term paper :P).


Another problem for me is that I hear words like I hear music, and I get into a rhythm of writing where sounds are more important than content, at times. Don't ask me where this comes from--although I have romanticized that it is remnants of my forgotten African ancestral language, somehow laying dormant in my DNA that has surfaced to destroy my ability to convey English appropriately.  It has taken me over ten years of writing my novel to realize that I never learned how to write, and I recognize that writing well will be my cudgel to bear for the rest of my life.

What has helped me throughout my life in my travels has hurt me immeasurably as a writer, but my deficiencies really hit home after years of working on my novel with my mother, my unofficial editor. I wish everyone had a mother as intelligent as mine, and who has the patience to explain over and over and over and over again why my sentence structure was less than desirable. My grammar has improved, but, I guarantee you, it will likely never meet my mother's standards.  She is a much more voracious reader than I'll ever be (thank you, law school). Also, she is a classically trained pianist with an ability to break music down to its core elements.  She was also trained to speak and read in German, a necessary linguistic skill when analyzing classical music, particularly, Beethoven, the King of classical music. English being a [half] Germanic language, the strict rules of German grammar have rooted themselves into our English language, but without true understanding by many of us, educated or not. 

I recommend that every writer should find someone in their eighties to edit his or her work.  Someone in that age range likely has a better understanding of grammar, frequented libraries (instead of malls) when younger, and whose education predated the ascendancy of movies and its obliteration of our English language.  Most likely, someone in their eighties and nineties also understands how to diagram a sentence.  My grandmother, who did not attend college, but who did graduate from high school, used to sit down with us and show us how to diagram sentences. When I complained about my difficulties writing, my mother reminded me about diagramming sentences, and to my amazement, I came across a diagram sentence website: Grammar Revolution.

I cannot speak more highly about Grammar-Revolution, and I encourage people to support the website by purchasing materials and spreading the site's gospel. So much of the site has free information to which one can return often, but please consider supporting the site by purchasing, at a minimum, the $19 Diagramming Reference Manual. I think Elizabeth O'Brien has done such a brilliant job of trying to save the English language, at least here, in the USA.  Everyone should spread the word about this website and every writer should be referring to it to assist his or her writing endeavor.  Note that I have never spoken to Ms. O'Brien, and at least as of this writing, she has never heard of me (I'll diagram the whole blog and make corrections before she gets word of me - LOL).  Watch the trailer of their 80-minute film, independently produced and directed by Elizabeth and company: http://www.grammarrevolutionmovie.com/

My quest for improvement, introspection, and perseverance is ongoing.  That's what my writing journey has been about, all along, I believe.  By sharing this blog with you and giving you information to help you along your journey, as readers of my upcoming novel (and present, past and future writers) I hope you are able to take the short-cuts I couldn't take because, I didn't take the time to learn that I knew so little about my native language.

Big words are merely big words. Conveying ideas is what writing is all about. When my novel does surface, you'll see the pains I went through to say what I wanted to say. Thanks to my mother and hired editor, it should all make sense.

Well, hope springs eternal. Whatever that means.

P.S.  Here are some other grammar-related websites and blogs:
http://blogs.kansas.com/grammar/  also known as @GrammarMonkeys
http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-girl also known as @GrammarGirl
http://www.grammarly.com

Grasping at Grief While Researching Death for My Mystery Novel

I'm not proud of the fact that it's taken me 13 years to write a novel. I wish I could say that it was an epic James Michener piece of sprawling historical landscape, or a Tolkien world of other civilizations that would justify a length of time usually reserved to writing a tome. My novel, "Severed," is no tome.  It's what is called a "cozy," with no significant amount of sex or violence to assault the senses, and it will likely be well under 350 printed pages, and/or whatever its eBook page equivalent turns out to be.

drawing source unknown

So what took me so long to write it?

The idea of my protagonist was born after I moved to New Hampshire (and where I have stayed ever since) in 2001 to tend to my mother after she lost her second husband of four years.  My birth parents had been divorced at least seven years by the time my father died in 1988, and I was an adult of 30 years at the time my father's body was found in his apartment, after family members had been trying to reach him.  Had he given any of his children a key to his apartment, there's a chance he would still be alive.  Anyway, on or about the time of my father's death, my youngest sister had visited him, knocking on the door, turning around after no one answered, and I, three thousand miles away, had called him out of the blue, I believe, at about the time he was dying--alone, of a heart attack.

I know enough about death to understand that when it comes, it comes.  End of story.  And as aggrieved as I am about my father's death, I understand that it is a part of life.  We are born.  And then we die. But, perhaps, subconsciously, in researching my novel, I wanted to know a bit more about what happens to the body when someone expires alone and exposed to the elements around him or her.  In my case, I wrote about what I learned what happens to our bodies when we die. Literally. I was not concerned with cosmos, parallel universes, airy-fairy hocus-pocus musings about the after-life.  I was focused upon what happens to our bodies' remains when we are no longer physically able to inhabit this corporeal world. Only years later did I realize that the universe was playing a role in teaching me what happens after death so that I could come to grips with my own father's untimely demise.

It also took me 13 years to write my novel because I had no idea how difficult it is to write. I had no idea that just because words are on paper doesn't mean that they belonged in print. +Marie Brown, a celebrated agent in New York, a close friend of a friend of mine (because, generally, being a friend of a friend is  the only way someone can get an agent's attention), was kind enough to read my manuscript and politely exposed my novel's shortcomings, suggesting that I do more work on my characters' back story, then focus on the plot logistics, which was the nuts and bolts of my novel.

Originally, I had three separate locations for my novel: Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Washington, D.C., and New Hampshire.  A logistical nightmare.  I chose Baton Rouge because I didn't want to have to conjure the stereotypes of Louisiana to give the readers what they are used to reading about the often-storied colorful people in that state.  My novel was not about perpetuating stereotypes, but breaking them.  However, after Marie Brown's wise counsel, it had become apparent that it was also not logistically feasible for Lula to live in Baton Rouge, but work in Cane River country.  I was also concerned that a state-by-state manhunt for a serial killer, although feasible (see my blog post of last week), didn't make sense in mine.  My characters needed to be in one place so their back story, and therefore, place in the mystery novel, could unfold.

Marie Brown critiqued my novel in 2006 or 2007 (I'll have to dig through mounds of research to find her letter to me), and it's taken me this long to re-write it. I dare not burden her with reading it again, as I'm ready for the baby to be born, now, however good or bad it might be.  Truly, I have written the equivalent of three novels, when it is all said and done. Writing is easy for a lawyer.  I can write an emergency motion or a brief within hours.

Writing well? That's another story.

Just because the words are on paper does not mean they are ready. I would have finished years earlier if I hadn't made that ego-driven faux pas of believing that because I could typewrite.


Another reason my novel took so long to write was because, as I explained above, I was writing about alien topics about which I had no knowledge, and I wanted there to be some semblance of authenticity, which required research.  I harangued different forensic anthropologists, relying mostly on Dr. Midori Albert, a professor at the University of North Carolina, in Wilmington, who let me tour her office, and who graciously gave me a book that could answer most of my questions when I became too big a pest. Another consult was +Dr. Jeffrey K. Tomberlin, a forensic entomologist, who divined the clue to my mystery's resolution.  We have never met, although I owe him a debt of thanks. I am certain that my blanket email inquiry to all of the members of the +American Board of Forensic Anthropology, so far back, inspired those with better knowledge of the field to beat me to the chase, as I had promised to hire any consultant in the event that any television series might germinate from my novel. Within 2 years of my inquiry, "Bones," was on television, characters not inspired by me, that's for sure, but I'm sure I was a catalyst to jump starting the idea.  I didn't care. I was still doing my research.

I'm okay with the pace it has taken to write my novel. It's been a learning experience; I understand what happened to my father, which is more important than meeting any self-imposed deadline.  I guess I have held on to my father's tragedy for some time, and now that I understand what happened to him, I feel I can let go.

Fiction is Fictional.

I'm always amused when a fiction writer is chastised by critics and other readers that his or her book is inaccurate. Can we, the readers, know as much as the writer about his or her fiction book?  Is there a communal consciousness where we all go and experience the same thing or event, then judge whether the writer properly tapped into it? Is there a continuum by which we can somehow experience "fiction" as it unfolds, thereafter turning it into non-fiction, when it is written, for readers to dissect and digest as a part of their reality? Certainly, this has been pondered before, but my experiences have made me question the zeitgeist of fiction writing and whether the concept of fiction really exists.

The background of my novel is loosely based upon lots of Internet research about contemporary Louisiana, and three visits to the state.  My first visit was to Baton Rouge, in 2002, at about the same time that the Beltway snipers were terrorizing America, playing target practice with innocent American travelers who would randomly fall victim to their sick game.  The killers were loose and on the run.  I was traveling to do research for my novel when someone had only recently been murdered in Baton Rouge, and there was a law enforcement belief that the killer was still roaming around there (there was no inkling that there were two killers working in tandem). By the time of my visit, I had decided upon which cities where my killer was going to be wreak havoc, namely, Washington, D.C., Baton Rouge, and New Hampshire. Considering my plot about a serial killer on the loose, and given the nation's terror, I was not immune to being spooked at the prospect that I could become a victim while traveling alone.

It was almost closing time when I visited the barbecue place that was to be an important location in the novel, at least at that iteration of my plot. I was ordering take-out, like my character was supposed to do, in my novel.  I sat next to a Black man, who, at the time, could have fit the description of the Baton Rouge murder suspect, who was deemed to be brown-skinned, medium frame, with short-cropped hair.  My suspect was by himself, too. I have to admit that, for the first time in my life, I was terrified of a black man: I was alone in a strange city, staying in a hotel, traveling by car--where cross-hairs could easily have been pointed at me.  Thankfully, once we started talking, I warmed up to him, and he to me.  Our orders arrived at about the same time. When I was walking out of the restaurant, he told me to be careful, warning me about the killer on the loose. I was scared when he said it.  Did I just get a pass, where he was allowing me to live, or was he as fearful as I was, too? It would turn out to be the latter.

Africa House, Melrose Plantation, Natchitoches,

After a friend suggested that my location be changed to Cane River country, in the northwestern part of the state, I finally did decide to focus my novel on a fictional town near Natchitoches, Louisiana (pronounced, "Nagadish,"), where historic plantations that once housed slave captives for manual labor still stood. While there, in 2005, I was analyzing the quaint historical parish, through the eyes of my protagonist, a black female forensic anthropologist, a transplant from California.  I arrived at the real plantation near closing time. When I told the U.S. Park Ranger my purpose in scouting a location where forensic anthropologists might work, the Ranger told me to wait around as there was someone to whom I could speak.  I was gobsmacked when she told me that there was a female forensic anthropologist that was in the field that day, doing research--doing exactly what my character was supposed to be doing.  And imagine my shock to see that she was Black. Considering the hour, as it was dusk and she was finishing for the day, she was very friendly and informative. She showed me the tools of her trade and took me to the site of her research.  She pointed out to me the grounds where she was conducting her studies: a grassy area where slaves were believed to have been unceremoniously buried, without headstones, in a field abutting the Cane River.  In fact, the forensic anthropologist had just made a real find:  coffins jutting out into the river bank where soil erosion and excessive moisture were causing the ground to literally fall into the river, exposing the coffins of the captives.  She also told me that she hailed from California.  Like my character, Lula. 

Uncle Jack, the good 'ol Darky

Lula's field work does not figure prominently in the novel. Her presence in Louisiana was a pretext for her to be in the state during its heralded Mardi Gras celebration, around which time the mystery unfolds.  I could have just as easily not  visited those places, Baton Rouge and Natchitoches, because I decided to create a fictional town called Nakadee, an amalgamation of some of the true places I had witnessed in my travels throughout the state. There is one true-life reference in my novel, to a hat-tipping "darky" statue, Uncle Jack, in the real parish of Natchitoches that still stands, an intransigent reminder and remainder of the good old days. 

Will I be chastised for misrepresenting facts about my fictitious parish? I know my topographical descriptions are hued from real study of the land I traversed, in criss-crossing the state, and looking exhaustively at aerial maps.  Other parts are mere imagination, added from another place to add context to my non-fiction origins.  I will be ready when people criticize me for not "getting" something right, or misrepresenting an area that has some basis in reality. I guess I should care, but I don't. The story is my fiction, born of my real imagination--that turned into part-premonition of real experience, that I re-fictionalized for the reader.  

So, Perhaps there really is no such thing as fiction, after all.  

Here's a historical perspective on the Uncle Jack controversy, which has only scant mention in my novel, but which speaks volumes about its time and place in our nation's history and present state of affairs.