Widening the Path: The Importance of Publishing Black Writers

Poets and Writers Article by Elizabeth Nunez, "Widening the Path: The Importance of Publishing Black Writers "

"Many black writers have not been as fortunate. It was not a renaissance after all, that booming interest in books by black writers in the 1990s. It was a passing fad, like last season’s fashionable style in clothes, replaceable when publishers, their eyes on the exotic, “discover” an untapped ethnic group among writers of color."

The above quote, from the article, about the rise in the popularity of Black books during the 1990s being a “fad” was interesting.  I guess given how short-lived the so-called renaissance was, the term is appropriate.

But if the surge in the popularity of Black literature in the 90's was merely a fad, perhaps the Harlem Renaissance was fad for all the same reasons.

The only true renaissance in Black literature, can not be dependent upon white largess, otherwise what we get are passing fads.