DEBRADICKERSON.COM

Hey! My cousin is an author too!

Debra J Dickerson — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 20:03:00 GMT

Check her out here. She writes Christian fiction. Haven't had a chance to check it out yet but will asap cuz!

The Writer Who Hesitates Gets Scooped

Debra J Dickerson — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 19:48:00 GMT

A few years ago, I was gobsmacked by an off comment in David Levering Lewis's WEB DuBois biography. Turns out that there was a resort that slave owners used to take their black families to vacation, near what is now Wilberforce University. In fact, the University was founded after the Quakers forced the resort to close and began as a college for the children of those slave-owner/slave families. Fascinating, right? Ever since, I've been wanting to write a book about the place. Well, while I was dithering,

NPR: The relationship between slave masters and the slaves who were their lovers can be difficult to fathom. But author Dolen Perkins Valdez takes on the subject in her a new book, titled Wench. Guest host Lynn Neary talks with Valdez about the project and the prevalence of such taboo relationships during the slavery era.

Damn! And, yeah, she was inspired in exactly the same way I was; by that tidbit in the DuBois bio.

Damn.

Funny what you find out about yourself when you have a Google Alert

Debra J Dickerson — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 13:27:00 GMT

Today, the net pulled in a video library of all my C-Span appearances, which began back in 1998 just as I entered the biz. Lotta water under the bridge. So, do your own research thru this archive, but if you're looking for dirt on me I made the odd mistake here and there. Mistakes both technical, logical and personal. I learned something important: I could never be an interviewer because stupidity puts me at war with my home training. There are some folks that need to be called out and I learned that I'm just not up to that. The stupider they are, the longer I let them talk because I couldn't bring myself to say what needed saying. It wasn't cowardice. It was good manners. It's one thing to take someone apart in writing because no one sees their face while it's happening. It's another to do it on the air. That's one of the many things I love about Jon Stewart or Chris Mathews, but it's not for me.

Oh well. It's always good to know your strengths and weaknesses.

Me on Al Jazeera

Debra J Dickerson — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 13:09:00 GMT

Here's the best link I can find for my appearance yesterday. It will rerun today and tomorrow. If you can figure out Greenwich Mean Time.

As usual, I spent the hour after the show kicking myself for the points I didn't think fast enough to make. I always end up the Pollyanna on race issues because so many black pundits harp on and on about racism. The point I didn't make is this one: if you've got the smarts and the determination to become a physician, a yoga instuctor, a Buddhist monk or a chef, there isn't one thing white racism can do to stop you.

We need to stop driving ourselves insane wondering what the white guy at the next desk is thinking about us. SO WHAT if he thinks you're an affirmative action hire if he's thinking about you at all. You likely think he'd have been long fired were he not white. White hearts are theirs to worry about and our actions ours to control. So, does racism remain, even with a black President? Of course, but so what? If you're not doing what you want to do as a black person, odds are pretty good that white racism isn't the reason why. The reason is YOU.

Demonstrators protest against a cartoon published in

the New York Post newspaper [GALLO/GETTY]

Gripping Haiti reportage

Debra J Dickerson — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 13:09:00 GMT

What medical staffs are witnessing in Haiti as they do the kind of work one associates with the Crimean War. Docs/nurses are operating with vodka-cleansed hacksaws and miner's head lamps. Unable to offer any care at night --no lights, no supplies, no room -- they can only check in the mornings to see who survived the night.

Huffpo:

"There are miracles. One girl, whose bed was the back hatch of a Toyota pickup truck, was unstable after we removed her right leg, which had been crushed by the rubble. We left her last night, uncertain if she would survive. But she did. And a sixteen year old girl delivered twins -- still born in the middle of the night, alone in the dark, groaning from the labor pains and the stabbing pain of her crushed and broken leg."

My favorite MLK Speech

Debra J Dickerson — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 21:00:00 GMT

"But if Not" delivered at Ebenezer Baptist in 1967. I first heard it sitting in my car for "a minute" that turned into the entire length of the sermon. I had just talked myself out of taking a public stand on something "black" because I 'didn't want to air our dirty laundry'. But this speech so shamed me...I can't even describe how it affected me. My spine straightens whenever I even think of it.

So, when I'm feeling cowardly, I listen to But If Not and remind myself what MLK and the civil rights generation faced. Nothing I'll ever have to deal with even comes close.

Hate the overuse of certain words in books? So does this wonderfully bitchy writer.

Debra J Dickerson — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 23:11:00 GMT

And this time, the bitch isn't me.

You should be following Colson Whitehead on Twitter. Not only is he the consummate author, but his tweets are killer. This one for instance: " Watched Celebrity Rehab in Hi-Def: yipes. Now switching TV to "Rabbit Ears, Bad Reception & fucked up V-hold" setting."

Whitehead rarely resorts to profanity (which I find annoying because gratuitious when one only has 140 characters). But I gave him that one because it's so funny.

This tweet, though, just leads you to a marvelous rant against The Road, a book we both loved. But we both also love this takedown of it. Mesmerized by its bleakness, I never noticed what this reviewer does. Still love the book, but love this, too. Bet the blogger also loved it.

Me on the radio Friday, January 15 and tomorrow, January 18

Debra J Dickerson — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 22:29:00 GMT

I'm also Doing Imus tomorrow at 630 a.m.

Here's me with The Atlantic's Jack Beatty, Zanny Minton Beddoes of The Economist and host Tom Ashbrook on NPR's On Point. Man, i'm rusty. Getting back into the mix isn't easy.

A girl screams after seeing the feet of her dead brother in the rubble of the collapsed St. Gerard School in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Thursday, Jan. 14, 2010. (AP)

More of that DIY spirit from Stephen Elliott

Debra J Dickerson — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 19:28:00 GMT

Homey's showing the rest of us writers how to make this crazy biz work. Just happened to run across this announcement from him on Twitter via Julie Klam.

Fighting the Power

Debra J Dickerson — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 19:23:10 GMT

Who'd have thought it would be a bunch of wonky nerds at TNR (many of whom are friends. That's how I know how wonky and nerdy they are.)? Thank God friends of intelligent, in depth writing and good books are fighting back. I'd like to think that Sarah Palin getting a job in journalism was the catalyst but, alas, this had to have been in the works for some time now. From The New Republic:

"Dear Friends of Books and Writers,

For many years, The New Republic has called itself “A Journal of Politics and the Arts." It regards both of those realms, both of those duties, with equal gravity and with equal joy. Two magazines in one magazine, we live doubly, the way intelligent people do. Like every other magazine and newspaper, we have spent the past decade developing a website to complement and enrich the content that appears in the print magazine. Most of that web content has focused on politics and breaking news. The time has come to break out of that necessary but constraining box. To that end, we are launching The Book: An Online Review at The New Republic.

We have another reason for creating The Book. The slow and steady transfer of people’s attention to the web is a fact of our culture. And the absence of any site for the serious consideration of serious books is also a fact of the web. And then there is the equally discouraging fact–not online but in the real world–of the literary impoverishment of American newspapers, many of which have fired their book critics and shrunk or closed their book sections. It is a time, then, for friends of books to push back. At The Book we plan to extend the critical principles that animate the literary pages of The New Republicto online journalism--to help fill the vacuum left by the carnage in American newspapers. And since the quality of the criticism whose demise we rightly bemoan was often not very high, this may be an opportunity not only to remedy the situation, but also to improve it."

TNR has thrown the glove down! Hallejuah. Read the entire manifesto: it's a real call to arms. They've also freed some writers from the tyranny of daily blogging to return to r-r-r... what's that word? Oh yeah: REPORTING.

I'm proud to say TNR launched my career with my essay Who Shot Johnny in January 1996 and even prouder of the mag now.

The brave new world of the writing biz

Debra J Dickerson — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 18:20:00 GMT

Trying to figure out this brave new, post-Internet, post-economic collapse writing game is giving me such a headache.

It's pretty obvious that writers are going to have to be a helluva lot more entrepreneurial and DIY. But that's obviously easier said than done. Check out one successful writer's experience with the DIY book tour. Sounds pretty painful for all involved. Stephen Elliott, author of The Adderall Diaries shares his experience at the NYT:

"I recently wrapped up a 33-city book tour. Originally, my publisher had a standard tour planned for me, bookstores in five large coastal cities. The early reviews were strong, and one friend, a successful author, encouraged me to do a larger tour. But the idea depressed me. “The Adderall Diaries” is my seventh book. I have my following, but I’m not famous. I didn’t want to travel thousands of miles to read to 10 people, sell four books, then spend the night in a cheap hotel room before flying home. And my publisher didn’t have the money for that many hotel rooms anyway.

I decided to try something I hoped would be less lonely. Before my book came out, I had set up a lending library allowing anyone to receive a free review copy on the condition they forward it within a week to the next reader, at their own expense. (Now that a majority of reviews are appearing on blogs and in Facebook notes, everyone is a reviewer.) I asked if people wanted to hold an event in their homes. They had to promise 20 attendees. I would sleep on their couch. My publisher would pay for some of the airfare, and I would fund the rest by selling the books myself."

Ah, book tours. Elliott's comparisong of standard with non-standard tours is captures it all too well. You should check his essay out. I've done two standard tours and let me tell you - they may sound glamorous but they're not. They're exhausting and for months you get to say all the same things and answer all the same questions from about 6 am ("Good morning, Cincinatti.") to about 10pm when you finish a grueling day with a book talk at a big Borders or Barnes and Nobles. Bites the big one. Which is good. It means your book is doing well. But, given the current state of big publishing, no one knows what's going on, not even folks like Susan Orlean.

It's very likely that the standard book tour, the standard publisher-editor-writer-product-reader relationship is going the way of the do-do.

Saddest of all, I know I've used the wrong verb tense.

Analysis has led to paralysis for me as to where/when/how to leap back into the fray so...

Debra J Dickerson — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 00:08:00 GMT

...I'm starting with something fairly innocuous. ("Fairly," because it's certainly not so to his friends, family and hardcore fans.)

Something not so debilitatingly scary for a formerly prolific, successful writer who has been sidelined for the last decade by...all sorts of stuff.

What else can I do with what happened in Haiti this week? But that's what happens when you procrastinate. Oh well. Turns out that timing really is everything. Who knew?

Haiti is so enormous, so well-covered, forgive me for 'punting' to think about Teddy P., who helped dominate my early '70s post-pubescence, waaay pre-internet teen years.

My first slow dance (at about 14) was to one of the Blue Notes songs. It was at the wedding of the eldest Hite brother who was either en route to or home on leave from Viet Nam (more on them later. ESPECIALLY Darryl. And sometimes Andre), with whom I grew up in north St. Louis. Don't remember which song but am sure it was pre-solo Teddy and equally sure/aware of how...freighted...the experience was.

Because I'm me, I can't now help layering on comedian Franklin Ajaye's decade-later riff on T Pendergrass's...approach...to seduction. On an album called "Dont' Smoke Dope; Fry Your Hair" (don't ask), he mused on Teddy's lovemaking approach. I'm embedding the link at the first point at which, as Ajaye, noted, "Teddy will scare a bitch into giving him some."

It's this kind of consciousness-raising layering that turned me into the unemployable harridan I am now.

Oh well.

Yeah. I'm a big feminist but I didn't make Teddy sing the way he did. So, listen to the whole song while I continue looking for Ajaye's riff on youtube. If u find it, please forward. Thanks.

Note:? You can love Teddy, as I do, and realize now -- in the post-feminist lib moment--that his 'schtick' was a trifle...scary.

Whew.

Not happy with this post, but at least I've got it over with.

Whew.

p.s. I'm going to try hard not to allow myself to either spell check, delete or rewrite this.

Will explain why later.

If you believe in my work, hang in there y'all.

All wil be made clear. -Ish.