Hey there and welcome to Nothing but the Words. I’m your author coach, Candice L Davis.
I’m recording this episode while protests are happening all over this country in the wake of yet another unarmed black person being murdered by the police.
George Floyd lost his life to a police officer while 3 other police officers stood by and watched him die.
Mr. Floyd’s story needs to be told.
Ahmaud Aubrey’s story needs to be told.
Breonna Taylor’s story needs to be told.
Philando Castile’s story needs to be told.
Sean Bell’s story needs to be told.
Sandra Bland’s story needs to be told.
Eric Garner’s story needs to be told.
Jordan Davis’s story needs to be told.
Trayvon Martin’s story needs to be told.
Your story needs to be told.
For hundreds and even thousands of years of history the people in power controlled the narrative. They controlled what stories were documented and what stories were largely ignored.
The news media does a necessary and important job. Reporters are frontline, in the moment, tellers of the story of the moment.
But they can only tell the stories their editors or producers or executives deem worthy. And once a story is no longer news of the day, it disappears from the headlines.
If you’re a white person listening to this, stay with me. Stick with me through this episode. So many of my white friends have said they want to be a part of the solution to racial injustice and inequity, specifically in the United States, but they don’t know where to start.
There are tons of resources online with lists of ways to be anti-racist. At the same time, I suggest seeking to understand. Seek first to understand the black experience today and how we got to this place.
If you are a black person listening to this podcast—or frankly any person of color or person in a marginalized group—and you’ve been thinking about telling your story in a book, I highly encourage to stop thinking and learn whatever you need to learn to get your book written.
The world needs your story. The world needs your wisdom, your experience, your knowledge, and your expertise.
Whether it’s a story of injustice—and if you’re a black person in America, injustice is undoubtedly a character in your story—or a story of overcoming, or achievement, or success, this country needs your story. Even if the story isn’t your own but documents something you believe is important to your community, you have a responsibility to write that book and get it out to the world.
The world needs the story you’ve been THINKING about telling.
I’m not here to tell you that everyone needs to write a book. But I am here to tell you that if you’re delaying writing the book you feel drawn to write you are denying the world your story and you are denying the world the difference that story can make.
When I was in fourth grade, my mother handed me a book with very serious-looking black people on the cover. It was called “Blacks in Science,” and it was written by one of her closest friends from high school. Together, they’d attended school in the segregated South. My mother went on to become an attorney. This friend, a black woman who grew up in the Jim Crow South, went on to become a nuclear physicist.
Blacks in Science didn’t go on to become a New York Times best seller. But it opened my eyes to possibility. I didn’t go on to become a scientist, but it seemed possible that I could, and when my older daughter said, at nine years old, that she planned to become a doctor when she grew up, I never doubted for a moment that she could do so. Today’s she’s completing a dual residency in internal medicine and psychiatry.
I rarely saw blacks in science on TV or in the movies. The only black person in science I can remember learning about in school was George Washington Carver. But because I had a book called Blacks in Science as a child, that possibility was real for me. It was possible that black people could do all kinds of things I never saw them do in the media. And when my daughter told me she wanted to be a doctor, I saw that as a very real possibility for her.
Hattie Caldwell self-published her book at a time when it was much more difficult than self-publishing is right now.
Black stories have always mattered but, until recently, they’ve had to fight for a place on the bookshelf.
But think about these books and the difference they made.
Harriet Jacobs – Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - 1861
James Weldon Johnson – The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man - 1912
Richard Wright – Black Boy - 1945
Ralph Ellison – The Invisible Man - 1952
James Baldwin – Go Tell It on the Mountain – 1953
Toni Morrison – The Bluest Eye - 1970
Alex Hailey – Roots: The Saga of an American Family - 1976
Maya Angelou – I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – 1969
Toni Morrison – The Bluest Eye - 1970
Percival Everett - Erasure – 2001
Jesmyn Ward – Men We Reaped - 2013
Tayari Jones – An American Marriage -2018
If you’ve missed even one book on that list, order it, check it out form the library, read it.
These books change lives. They let black people see themselves. They allow other people, white people in particular, to get just a glimpse of our reality in America.
All of those authors needed a publisher’s permission to tell their story in a book. Many of their peers were denied that privilege. You however don’t need that permission.
It doesn’t matter if you plan to write a memoir, a novel, or a how-to book, or a subject-matter expert book.
You have a privilege generations before us didn’t enjoy
You can write your book right now and publish it on platforms where it will available to any and everyone to buy and read. You can share your story with the world. You can share you knowledge and shine a light on black achievement, black excellence, and black humanity.
In doing so, you shine a light on truth.
By telling your story you claim a piece of history from the people who would tell it wrong. Don’t allow that. We cannot complain that our stories are co-opted if we don’t take every opportunity to own them. Take ownership of your story. Write your book.
Thanks for listening to Nothing but the Words, I’m your author coach, and I’ll see you next time.