IT'S ALL GINGER'S FAULT
I read and I'm black. That didn't seem like such a strange thing until I hit high school and realized that I read more than most blacks I knew. I read YA novels, Popular Mechanics, biographies, classic medieval tomes, newspapers. I read while walking, while knitting, during slow moments in Health class. Truth was, I probably read more than most white folks I knew (okay, maybe not as much as my best friend Ginger who was a short sassy white girl).
Trouble became my middle name when I not only read lots of stuff but I started writing. Then I went from just a nerdy black girl to meddlesome. It didn't help that I heard somebody say (a black person, I think) that if you want to hide something from a (insert N-word here) you need to put it in a book. There were a lot of other not so nice things I'd heard about black folks and intelligence but that one struck a chord.
WRITING WHILE BLACK
I started writing about biblical racial reconciliation (RRECON) in the early nineties shortly after becoming a co-leader of a RRECON discussion group made of whites and blacks from different churches. We'd get together once a month and discuss some RRECON nonfiction book or racially-charged current event and I'd write up these essays and email them out to everyone between meetings.
Pretty soon I got a reputation for being an angry black female. Truth is, I'm anything but 'angry black female.' Intense about race and faith? Yes. But not angry. Okay, my hairstyle (down my back and locked in dreds now for more than 12 years) does lend itself to the angry persona but that's not why I wear my hair this way. (I'll save that one for another blog).
TAKE A SURVEY
So, now that I hope I've established that I'm not angry at anyone (and not out to get anyone angry at me with my nonconfrontational self), I would like to invite you take a survey. If you are a person of color and read Christian fiction, I'd love for you to have you fill out the survey.
I'm not profiling anyone or trying to exclude any of our brothers and sisters of the lighter hue. They are certainly free to take the survey as well. It's just that I'm curious about some things. And someone once told me that if you want answers you've got to ask a few questions. So here I am asking questions. I want to understand what it is that makes you, as a person of color, want to read fiction.
With your conscent, I'll be posting your responses on this blog. And later this month, I'll have interviews from two Christian Booksellers Association (CBA) authors and two CBA acquisitions editors. The purpose of having those voices here with your comments will be to help answer some other questions I've had for some time about racism in Christian fiction. (Yeah, you read that right, I pulled the race card.)
PLANTING SEEDS
Race is hard to talk about and hardly talked about, especially in the house of God. That shouldn't be so. Sometimes I may come across too strong or even angry. If I do, call me on that. I promise you I'll try my best to come back honest, and loving. You're my sister (or brother). If we're in Christ; we're family. Let's treat each other that way. For real, Matthew 17 style.
Okay, this post has rambled on long enough. I'm black and I read; and I also write. I am a little crazy but I ain't mad.
About 17 Seeds
Hi. My name is Linda Hargrove. I'm a North Carolina native. I write (fiction mostly), I design things, and I'm an adoptive mom of three boys.IN THE BEGINNING
Around 1992 I became involved in an urban ministry called Building Together Ministries (BTM). As a CCDA ministry, BTM has racial reconciliation as one of its tenets. My husband and I became co-leaders of racial reconciliation discussion groups that we called 'supper clubs.'
The clubs were made up of blacks and whites from various denominations throughout the region. Each month we met in homes and church basements to discuss how we, the church, might better address racial problems in our country. We used books like More Than Equals by Spencer Perkins and Chris Rice and Breaking Down Walls by Raleigh Washington and Glen Kehrein.
THINGS GOT RADICAL
In 1995 I began a personal Bible study of John. When I started John 17 it was like I was reading a new Word. Jesus's prayer for oneness struck a cord with me. In my eyes, we Christians weren't living out that prayer. It saddened me.
I felt God's leading to do something 'racially radical' so that, as John 17:22 states, the world might be drawn to Him. Around that same time, God was leading my husband to become involved in a predominately white church. I gladly followed. Within a year, we became members and started a racial reconciliation prayer group. In time I began speaking at the church's women's conference on racial reconciliation.
THEN CAME ISAAC
In 1996 I started writing my first novel, The Making of Isaac Hunt, to help Christians better relate to the principles of racial reconciliation. In 1997 my husband and I moved our highly educated selves into the 'rough' part of town around BTM, striving to live out one of the three Rs of Christian community development--relocation.Reconciling faith and race is not an easy thing. This blog is my attempt to understand race in this country (a mighty big task) but more importantly, to plant seeds of oneness within the Body of believers across racial lines.
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