Primary Sources
A Century of Negro Migration by Carter G. Woodson
A Short History of the American Negro by Benjamin Griffith Brawley
As We See It by Robert Lewis Waring
Beacon Lights of the Race by Green Polonius Hamilton
Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington
Following the Color Line by Ray Stannard Baker
The Future of the American Negro by Booker T. Washington
The American Negro: what he was, what he is, and what he may become by William Hannibal Thomas
The Negro in the South by Booker T. Washington & W. E. B. Du Bois
Masterpieces of Negro eloquence: the best speeches delivered by the Negro edited by Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson
The college-bred Negro by W. E. B. Du Bois
The history of the Negro church By Carter G. Woodson
The Negro in Business by W. E. B. Du Bois
The Philadelphia Negro by W. E. B. Du Bois
The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois
The African Abroad, volume one & volume two
Archives for NAACP’s The Crisis
The Afro-American Press and its Editors by Irvine Garland Penn
Mob Rule in New Orleans: Robert Charles and His Fight to Death, the Story of His Life, Burning Human Beings Alive, Other Lynching Statistics by Ida B. Wells-Barnett
The Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States by Ida B. Wells-Barnett
Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases by Ida B. Wells-Barnett
A Negro Explorer at the North Pole by Matthew Henson
History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest by Edward A. Johnson
The Negro Farmer by Carl Kelsey
The Black Side of Atlanta by Edward R. Carter
Through Afro-America: an English reading of the race problem by William Archer
Tuskegee & its people: their ideals and achievements By Emmett Jay Scott
Twenty-five years in the Black Belt by William J. Edwards
The Colored Girl Beautiful by Emma Azalia Hackley
Secondary Sources
Gerri Major’s Black society with Doris E. Saunders
The other Brahmins : Boston’s Black upper class, 1750-1950 by Adelaide M. Cromwell
Certain people : America’s black elite by Stephen Birmingham
A small nation of people : W.E.B. Du Bois and African American portraits of progress by the Library of Congress
The Black Washingtonians : the Anacostia Museum illustrated chronology
Leading the race : the transformation of the Black elite in the nation’s capital, 1880-1920 by Jacqueline M. Moore
Harlem; the making of a ghetto; Negro New York, 1890-1930 by Gilbert Osofsky
Before Harlem : the Black experience in New York City before World War I by Marcy S. Sacks
The guide to Black Washington : places and events of historical and cultural significance in the nation’s capital
The Divine Nine: The History of African American Fraternities and Sororities by Lawrence C. Ross, Jr.
The Black New Yorkers : the Schomburg illustrated chronology
Aristocrats of color: the Black elite, 1880-1920 by Willard B. Gatewood
Howard University: The First Hundred Years 1867-1967 by Rayford W. Logan
African American women and the vote, 1837-1965 by Ann Dexter Gordon & Bettye Collier-Thomas
African American women in the struggle for the vote, 1850-1920 by Rosalyn Terborg-Penn
Pauline E. Hopkins: a literary biography by Hanna Wallinger
Booker T. Washington: the wizard of Tuskegee, 1901-1915, Volume 2 by Louis R. Harlan
A colored woman in a white world by Mary Church Terrell
‘They say’: Ida B. Wells and the reconstruction of race by James West Davidson
Ida B. Wells-Barnett and American reform, 1880-1930 by Patricia Ann Schechter
Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, and the struggle for racial uplift by Jacqueline M. Moore
Negro league baseball: the rise and ruin of a Black institution by Neil Lanctot
I’m of the school who believes a person cannot learn a lesson until they’re prepared for it. I believe because I am that person who is frequently playing catch-up and stumbling upon pithy and profound observations I know I wasn’t ready to receive a while ago. No matter how much good advice I read, or how much encouragement I receive, it won’t help until I’m ready for it.
This happened a week ago.
Towards the end of 2009, I began to look back on my haphazard, failed writing career with a bit of guilt and shame. See, I’ve been in the online romance writing community, in various guises, since late 2003. Many people who are now multi-published started out around the time I discovered the online community, and yet, while I sat back and let myself be devoured by doubts, fears, insecurities, and bad habits, they soared above and beyond that. In vain, I spent the next few years starting and stopping manuscripts, trashing what I did complete, and struggling to discover the Holy Grail leading the “tipping point” that transformed a working writer into a published author. Oh, there were short, spontaneous instances where I saw the light at the end of the tunnel and chucked all my self-imposed burdens of doing what others were doing (confession time: I initially began to write Edwardian-set historicals in 2004 partly b/c I loved the period, but mostly to make myself look “different” from the crowd of historical romance writers, but I slipped back into self-doubt, and as I kept hemming and hawing over appearing too “different,” authors, both established and new, took the plunge and did the previously-abhorred late Victorian/Edwardian era)–but they were quickly overtaken by disarming fears.
I’d read plenty of inspiring books, blog posts, and articles over the years, and a few seconds of clarity and confidence pierced my breast. But the second I sat down to write, that blank page screamed “hack” at me, and when I did choke a few thousand words out, I couldn’t shake the certainty (a lie) that what I was writing was all wrong, that I wasn’t as good as I thought, and that I was destined to be one of “those writers.”
Like I said, I looked back on the past five or six years with a bit of guilt over the Christmas season: why had I done this? why hadn’t I done that? why did I make or why didn’t I make this or that decision on X date? I had [fill in the blank] I could be published right now!
On an on the wail went, fairly rattling my bones with its chagrin and accusations.
I sat down to log onto the internet Jan 2nd, around 2 am or so (I work best at night), and visited my friend Zoe Winters’s blog. I went to leave a comment on a post, when I realized I was logged out of wordpress. When I logged into wordpress, I hesitated on wp’s main page, where they highlight a few blogs. The name “Tyler Durden” popped out at me. Since I wrote a post on bartitsu for Edwardian Promenade, and visited bartitsu.org where they posted an interview with the stunt/fight coordinator for Sherlock Holmes, the movie Fight Club was fresh in my brain (the coordinator mentioned the flick as an inspiration for staging the fights). So clicked on the link and was taken to the blog of an unknown-to-me author, Justine Musk.
Now, this is typical of me: I frequently discover things I need to read by roundabout methods. *g*
All of the sudden, as I read Musk’s series of posts about writing, comparing it with the lessons learned in Fight Club, the light went on. No, really came on. Not the buzz and faint flicker of a hesitant bulb, but a full-blown, 60 watt, brand-spanking-new light bulb–one of those energy saving bulbs that won’t die for forty years. I felt differently, I thought differently, I was different(ly).Musk put into words exactly, precisely what I’d been battling over the last five, six years. It wasn’t that much-recycled “you can do it!” or “just sit down and write” that longtime published writers frequently say (as much as I’m inspired by you guys, I need my pep-talk and encouragement to be a bit deeper)–Musk tossed aside the advice that merely strokes the surface of a writers’ psyche and went waaaay into the belly of the beast.
Then today, I read Sherry Thomas’s blog, where she detailed her tribulations in completing her upcoming book. I love Sherry’s writing–it’s full of zest and biting wit, and the emotion is always, always there even if I’m not crazy about some of the characters. I’m not the schadenfreude type, but it shocked me, viscerally, to read that someone whose writing I admire so much, whose books appear on the shelves like near-flawless, emotion-packed gems, does not write so flawlessly, was humbling (oh yeah, I was humbled BIG time when I posted a first page to DA). I must admit to my arrogance that hovered around the periphery of my insecurity, and apologize for it. :/
But anyways, I’m ready for where I’m meant to go with my writing, and I feel noticeably lighter right now.
I just wanted to make my first post for the new year and new decade!
The more I dig into history of the Edwardian era the more I realize how short-changed we are. History is apparently written by the victors and the oppressors, but in this enlightened age, there is no real effort to change this oft-repeated maxim and this lack is why so many people–black, white Asian, Latino, American, English,etc–believe half-truths about society and race. I don’t diminish Jim Crow or the Chinese Exclusion Act or the slave trade, but good grief, things were a lot more nuanced and HUMAN than we’re taught.
I love to browse the archives of The New York Times, and after sifting through pages upon pages of articles from the 1850s to the 1920s, there are many remarkable stories embedded within the typical hysterical accounts of “Negro violence.” An article on Madame C.J. Walker’s mansion never fails to amuse me because more than ninety years later, I can still feel the shock and amazement of the no-doubt white journalist profiling the millionairess and the black architect who designed her palatial estate. Other interesting articles detail interracial marriages–black man/white woman, black woman/white man, etc–despite the harsh laws against miscegenation. It’s also interesting to read accounts of 1900s Chinatown juxtaposed against the fawning blandishments heaped upon the famous diplomat and general Li Hung-Chang.
Researching outside of the New York Times and into Google Books reveals how fluid “race” could be, particularly in diplomatic circles. For example, the half-Japanese, half-German daughter of Viscount Aoki, ex-Minister of Foreign Affairs, married a German noble. Another book on Washington D.C. society even describes the wife of the Haitian ambassador as “beautiful.” One of the most startling accounts of a multicultural meeting was the reception held by the Duchess of Sutherland for Booker T. Washington. While that was extraordinary in itself, I wondered immediately how Dr. and Mrs. Washington traveled to London since I’ve read no account of transatlantic travel for non-white, non-emigrant passengers (Willard B. Gatewood’s “Aristocrats of Color” mentions that quite a few wealthy blacks traveled abroad). I found the ship the Washington’s crossed the Atlantic on, but there was no news of discrimination occurring–and Washington even attended a few country house parties, I believe!
Over the course of my feverish research, I uncovered a bevy of sources that prove how multicultural the past could be. Just as today interracial interaction can be fraught with issues, the past was, but at no point in time were peoples of different hues completely separate, and I love that in fiction I can overturn these misconceptions.
Suzy Q continues to attend conferences and mentors up-and-coming writers all the while fretting over her career. These mentored writers are bombarded with the allure of being published, and Suzy Q. contributes to this cycle, abhorring the thought of e-publishers and e-published writers being legitimized by the RWA. One of the writers Suzy mentored hits the jackpot: a contract with an NY publisher. Suzy is happy for this writer because it affirms her belief that traditional publishing is not a crapshoot, that it is the only way to go.Yet Suzy Q. remains unpublished, and she is troubled by the many rejections she continues to receive.
But…she did everything right! She took the right workshops, read the right books, queried the right agents, entered into the right contests.
It isn’t fair that she cannot reap the rewards of doing it right.
When Suzy Q. gets the rights to her earliest titles, she has no clue what to do with them. Someone mentions ebooks, and Suzy Q. is terrified by the notion. Someone else mentions self-publishing. Suzy Q. definitely screams in terror. Her published friends can offer little advice, many concerned with the direction of their own careers, though a few have punched through the glass ceiling of best-sellerdom. But they all definitely advise against producing her books on her own.
Suzy Q. is filled with doubts, despair and envy. If she were to go the non-traditional route…wouldn’t her friends shake their heads in defeat? Wouldn’t all the bright-eyed unpublished authors who cited her books as an inspiration turn away? Wouldn’t her status in the RWA decline because she appeared to have given up? And wouldn’t she be banished from all of the perks of being a published member of the RWA? Would readers even believe the quality of her work should she self-publish or e-publish her past and future books?
If you were Suzy, what would you do?
Over at Dear Author’s thread on errors, typos, and misprints galore, the comments are enlightening not due to the griping over the topic, but because of the few discussing grammar and language. When Moriah Jovah commented that whinge and whine were not the same word, and when Courtney Lee and Growly Cub discussed homophones and homonyms, and someone mentioned Newfanese, I immediately googled all three. And what do you know? You learn something new everyday!
From Merriam-Webster:
whinge • to complain fretfully : whine
She urged her fellow workers to stop whinging about how they were victims of “the system” and to do something to change that system.
“Whinge” isn’t just a spelling variant of “whine.” “Whinge” and “whine” are actually entirely different words with separate histories. “Whine” traces to an Old English verb, “hwinan,” which means “to make a humming or whirring sound.” When “hwinan” became “whinen” in Middle English, it meant “to wail distressfully”; “whine” didn’t acquire its “complain” sense until the 16th century. “Whinge,” on the other hand, comes from a different Old English verb, “hwinsian,” which means “to wail or moan discontentedly.” “Whinge” retains that original sense today, though nowadays it puts less emphasis on the sound of the complaining and more on the discontentment behind the complaint.
Homophone (wikipedia) and a list of them here and here.
Newfanese (dialect in Newfoundland) here
As I’m revising the plot of HHR I’m bumping up against what makes someone unattractive. The premise of the tale focuses on the heroine’s unattractiveness to the hero. But I don’t want to be cliched and make her overweight because that doesn’t make you ugly and for the time period women we would consider hefty today were considered very attractive–for example, Lillian Russell, who weighed up to 200 lbs, but was Broadway’s premiere star and the sex symbol of the Gilded Age.
Also, in the age of heavy corseting, petticoats, corset-covers, and a host of other undergarments that gave Edwardian women a robust look, concepts of beauty were completely different. Yet, if I make my heroine skinny as a sign of unattractiveness, modern eyes would be confused–even if I spelled out that curvaceousness was the mark of gorgeousness. And as someone who wears glasses–cute ones too–nearsightedness is definitely not my idea of signaling someone’s homeliness.
But on that note, I’m having a difficult time really sinking into the skin of my characters. It’s not that I don’t “get” them, I just feel superficial when I write them, and when I try to dig too deeply, I end up losing the story in the midst of theme, motif, etc.
I also had the weirdest dream last night! It was one of those dreams that felt so real that when I woke up I wasn’t sure whether it was real or not. In conjunction with this weird dream, I also had an uncanny run-in with a particular song. I need to pay attention to these messages!
I had to dig up an old Will Smith interview that had an impact on me for this post. Presently, it is 11:50-something pm, and I’ve been online for about five or six hours straight.
“I do not believe in getting trapped in a pattern when you recognize the pattern.”
This is not only a bad habit, but a bad pattern, and one that goes tandem with my recent propensity to pluck at my eyebrows or my eyelashes when I’m bored or stressed. When I first sat down at the computer I was in “work mode”–gathering research, brainstorming a bit about how to start HHM, etc. Basically, I was pretty determined to address the issues I faced with this MS. I visited a few websites I visit quite often, but then I began to browse amazon.com for some upcoming releases and stumbled upon a list of new and upcoming urban fantasy releases. Now, I am a huge UF fan–have been for about six or seven years–but I’ve never felt the urge to write one. However, my CP brought Samhain’s Angels & Demons anthology to light and I thought: “Hey, I could write one.” To make a long story short, I can’t write everything–or least not right now. After all, it took me about five years before contemporary romance ideas began hitting me like a sack of bricks. Prior to that I was convinced historical romance was it for me.
So what did my idiotic self do after seeing all those titles (and thinking about the practically guaranteed sale if I wrote an UF)? I started stressing my brain to come up with ideas. My imagination is good, but it’s not that good, which is the main reason I’ve never tried to write a paranormal anything. I have a fit trying to integrate suspense into my romance–world-building with something I can make up myself? Nope–at the present, I don’t trust myself enough to come up with something completely my own, and I honestly don’t have the patience to create a new world. I’ll leave it to the experts.
My pattern emerges: stress equals prolonged internet usage (and hair pulling), which equals a decreased amount of time in which to do productive things like, I don’t know–schoolwork and writing. *g* So I recognize my bad pattern and if I don’t change it’s because I don’t want to change. The ball is in my court.
A major source of frustration for me is how easily I can craft witty, elegant opening lines for my history blog, and yet struggle through writing the first sentence of my fiction. I’m not one to jump on trends and I like where my stories begin, but you must admit that the books which have caught the eye of everyone within the past year have opened with jaunty hooks. But perhaps this is the result of viewing my stories as a “movie”–a movie not only sets the scene visually, but everything is revealed through dialogue and the expression on the actors’s faces. A novel is an entirely different medium of expression, there is room for internal dialogue, for description, for wide and varied description, but unlike a film, a book must stand on its own without flashy side effects that can obscure a weak plot or tepid dialogue. So, rather than focusing on dynamic opening lines, focus on dynamic opening scenes which will retain the attention of a reader.
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