Criticism of the white media is nothing new. Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) criticized the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Atlanta Constitution, and the Memphis Commercial Appeal for their negative coverage of Black Americans. Denigrating Blacks is still common at the New York Times, where social problems tend to have a Black face.
For over 200 years, Black American poets, novelists, and playwrights have used writing to present a multidimensional portrait of Black Americans. Many prominent writers were published in Black newspapers, but with the collapse of the Black press, only the opinions of a few divas and divos get through, and when they insult their backers as James Baldwin did in his neglected novel Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone, they are replaced by other divas or divos.
This article appears in Issue 31 of Alta Journal.
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That’s why I decided to become a global author. I studied Japanese, Yoruba, and Hindi. My novel Japanese by Spring earned me trips to Japanese and Chinese universities. In China, the book was declared a National Project.
I read a poem in Yoruba, the language spoken by many of the African enslaved, before an audience of intellectuals in Lagos, Nigeria. The poem was approved of by a popular Nigerian author, the late Cyprian Ekwensi.
My study of Hindi led to the inclusion of South Asian actors in my play The Conductor. This global strategy has paid off.
If it weren’t for the BBC; El País, a Spanish newspaper, which published my election views on January 2; and a piece of mine in CounterPunch, my theory about the vice president’s loss, which differs from the mainstream view that it was about the price of eggs, would not have been aired.
The BBC wanted to know why my name wasn’t mentioned in the New York Times Book Review’s feature about Bay Area writers. Never mind. As an author, I am better off than 90 percent of American authors. The BBC interview reached the world.
I’ve been published frequently in Alta Journal, but even at 87, with international honors, I have difficulty getting articles into American publications. I persist because with the racial composition of the mainstream media, there’s little room for points of view that challenge the stereotypical portrayal of Black Americans. Is this a matter of white editors rejecting my views? No. When it comes to my work, Blacks and whites have an equal opportunity to send rejection notes or not answer at all.
So rare is a Black face in New York publishing, which is 50 years behind the South in terms of diversity, that the chosen few are like literary pandas. I’ve had better luck communicating with two prime ministers than with some Blacks in New York publishing. Maybe it’s because, as the late author Elizabeth Nunez said, the publishers want “girlfriend books” from Black authors.
Chris Jackson runs One World, a subsidiary of Random House. He asked me to submit a book of poetry and a memoir for possible publication. He never told me the outcome. He doesn’t respond to my emails. Scribner will publish the 50th-anniversary edition of my book Flight to Canada in 2026. It was among the first “neo–slave narratives,” a term I coined. At 87, I’ve seen divas and divos come and go.
Coming west, I found that other writers, Asian American, Native American, and Hispanic, experience the same one-at-a-time tokenism that’s harmed Black literature since the 1920s. In its Manhattanized view of American literature, the New York Times designated Joan Didion as the “Voice of the West,” which ignores Hispanic literature that originated in the 1600s.
Only when a variety of viewpoints are aired will our country improve. Though the corporate media somehow feel superior to social media, I have learned from posts provided by Native American, Hispanic, and Asian American historians whose views are absent from school curricula and the media.•
Join us on April 17 at 5 p.m. Pacific time, when Ishmael Reed will sit down with CBC host John Freeman and special guest Justin Desmangles to discuss Mumbo Jumbo. Register for the Zoom conversation here.
