So I’m working on a YA novel about …
A senior in high school …
I know I know it doesn’t sound like anything new but it’s the perspective that I’m going for, a young black nerdy teenage girl. It sounds really simple, but as I read my weight in books as a kid. There were no stories about girls like me. So that’s what I’m going for, a diary styled version of a blerdy girl moving to a new place but that’s not my dilemma.
My dilemma is my main characters cultural identity.
I keep hopping between Black American and a second-generation African(I’m deciding between three countries), Black American mix. And although these may sound similar it’s a different experience. The Black American side would be written the same. Southern Black American culture is what I know, it’s the basic building blocks of me.
But Being second-generation African-American mixed with Black-American is different, there are many layers. Being a part of Black American culture and figuring out where you fit in while having a side of the family on a different continent. Being very African and at the same time being very much a Black American all at the same time. To be honest, this is a duel identify that I don’t ever see people mentioning.
I see lots of first-generation American stories. I see a lot of interracial teenage stories and stories about people from different tribes within the same country getting together, but never any inter-cultural relationships between African Americans and Black Americans or even African and Black Americans honestly.I’ve seen triple the number of stories about Nigerian men bringing home a white woman than I have about Nigerian men bringing home a Black American woman. Which would in most cases be just as much as a culture shock. And yet no one explores these stories.
The conundrum is that I feel like there is a big need for Black American stories that delve beyond the norm. It’s a difficult choice because this character is much more of my baby than me …
They say if you see a story that is unwritten then it is your place to write it. There’s an empty space and I’m gonna fill it with my pen.
Wish me luck.
(I’m using Black-American as a term to define those whose ancestors were brought to the U.S. during the transatlantic slave trade. And African American as the term for someone who came from the continent after the slave trade)
BlackGirlsLikeWhat?!? 