Black Books and Dead Black Bodies: Twitter, Hashtags, and Antiracist Reading Lists

Abstract

CLA JOURNAL 179 Black Books and Dead Black Bodies: Twitter, Hashtags, and Antiracist Reading Lists Kenton Rambsy and Howard Rambsy II In 2000, Janifer P. Wilson started Sisters Uptown Bookstore in Harlem, New York. For two decades, she struggled to turn a profit selling books, and so Wilson worked a different full-time job to keep her bookstore afloat. But her fortunes greatly improved during the summer of 2020, as conversations and sympathy concerning violence against black people prompted unprecedented sales of black books at black-owned booksellers. Wilson welcomed the uptick in profit yet was conflicted about the circumstances:“to have our business surge in a matter of weeks as the result of an unfortunate incident with a man losing his life and the whole world getting to see it has just impacted my spirit and soul” (de Leónet. al). Like many people, Linda Duggins, Senior Director of Punlicity at Grand Central Publishing, thought that it was“awesome”that conversations related to Black Lives Matter led to unprecedented support for books by African Americans and blackowned bookstores. However, she too had reservations. “It does sadden me,” she noted, “to know that the push for the sales is connected to that stacking of dead Black bodies” (de Leónet. al). As life-long participants in and students of black culture, we are aware of the longstanding interest in successful black books expressed by African American literary scholars and general readers. The remarkable feats in sales and media attentionAfricanAmerican booksellers and books about racism and white privilege achieved in June 2020 indicate that significant news coverage about brutalities committed against black people can substantially drive the interests of readerconsumers . This situation is made evident in the available data and reporting on book publishing. The relative lack of attention for African American novels and volumes of poetry suggests that these genres matter less for consumers in dire moments, at least in comparison to what is categorized as “antiracist” nonfiction. Our observations reveal that those of us who study and teach African American literature should do more to discuss the relationship between successful black books and dead black bodies. Not long after George Floyd was killed on May 25,protestors took to the streets. Activist groups removed or altered Confederate statues. Employees prompted their employers to release public statements supporting Black Lives Matter. And, notably, people published and circulated antiracist reading lists. The lists were especially designed for apparent white audiences or other groups that presumably 180 CLA JOURNAL Kenton Rambsy and Howard Rambsy II overlookedthehistoriesof blackstruggleandwhitesupremacy.Journalists,scholars, librarians, and others offered roundups of titles that addressed systemic racism, and sympathetic readers responded by ordering those book recommendations— in some cases tens of thousands of select works. Our long-standing interest in the implications of data concerning black cultural products led us to consider the convergence of protests and books sales. We focused on bestselling books supplied by NPD BookScan and presented in Publisher’s Weekly. During the month of May, virtually no book on the top ten bestseller list dealt directly with antiracist topics or subjects, though Michelle Obama’s autobiography Becoming remained on the list. In the first week of June, however, a discernible shift took place. So You Want to Talk about Race (2018) by Ijeoma Oluo entered the bestseller list at number 2 with 35,859 sales for the week, and White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism (2018) by Robin DiAngelo was ranked number 3 with 30,221 sales. The next week, Oluo’s and DiAngelo’s books remained on the top ten bestsellers list and were joined by Ibram X. Kendi with Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (2016) at the #5 spot and How to Be an Antiracist (2019) at the #7 spot with sales at 37,862 and 26,755, respectively. Between May 25, when Floyd was killed, and July 3, the last date for which we collected book data, DiAngelo’s White Fragility sold 408,401 copies; Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist sold 308,309; and Oluo’s sold 185,850. Put another way, those three books...