the future of fiction? (Wanda Tinasky Weighs In)

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

            Daniel Harper:
            On a related note, did you ever look 
            through the African American fiction 
            section of your local bookstore? It's 
            all gangstas and thugs and pimps 
            and hos -- I'm not a member of the 
            mentioned ethnic group, but if I was 
            I'd be insulted just walking past.

            That these are pretty much all written 
            by African-American authors only makes 
            it worse.

Used to shelve it all the time. It also has James Baldwin (why isn't he in Gay 
Lit, for heavens sake?), and Ishmael Reed (why isn't he shelved next to 
Pynchon and Philip K. Dick, for heavens sake?) And if there's a Gay Lit 
section, why isn't Armistead Maupin---"Michael Tolliver Lives" comes out 
[pardon] June 2007, I have an ARC, am I excited, or what?---and why did 
they move Sarah Waters from Dyke Lit. [providentially located near Law, 
Myth and Women's Studies] to "Lit-Tu-Ra-Ture"? It's that Booker Prize Shit, 
isn't it? And now that Rita Mae Brown is flogging crap. . . .

And What Is Gertrude Stein Doing In Literature Anyway???

. . . .and while we're at it, why isn't "Dykes to Look Out For" [probably the 
finest political serial comic strip---ever!!!] shelved with Doonsbury? Why 
does it always come down to me handing a copy to some stray pierced and 
tatted straight who somehow wandered into the lavender section of our store?

http://www.amazon.com/Dykes-Watch-Out-Alison-Bechdel/dp/0932379176