Only 1-2% of book proposals are published. Ninety-eight percent of writers who submit proposals are rejected by mainstream publishing and either self-publish or bury their idea. I am grateful for the advent of self-publishing because many of these stories need to be read; they encourage, instruct, challenge or delight people who otherwise would never see them.
Yet the competition to gain the attention of a traditional publishing house is oppressive, and I only had the bandwidth to attempt it when I quit my job and devoted my most productive hours to it. (Many authors have full time jobs AND kids; I don’t know how they do it!) Through a series of seemingly random events, I found an agent and she found a publisher. I can only conclude that God helped me and saw the project through.
There was an additional hurdle: only 5% of published authors is Black. This is an incredibly white dominated industry, which means the stories of Black people and other people of color are often overlooked and quashed even more.
SO, why did I write my book? Well, I’m biracial and growing up, I had a foot in two worlds, while simultaneously feeling like I didn’t belong in either. My parents didn’t understand that the way I walked through life was different from the way they did, and this made me feel isolated and alone. They assumed that love would be enough, but love wasn’t enough.
For most of my life, I felt a two-ness akin to the one W. E. B. DuBois described: “One ever feels his two-ness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder” (Souls of Black Folk).
My angst was not over being Black and American, but rather over being Black and white. I felt fully welcome in neither world and, for a while, I wandered in a no man’s land of racelessness: lonely, struggling with self-esteem, feeling the strain of two unreconciled strivings. Striving characterized much of my life and so much of that was because of race. Why can’t I be like the Black girls? Why can’t I be like the white girls? Full acceptance by my peers felt unattainable, and I rejected the parts of myself that seemed to be the culprit: It’s my whiteness! It’s my blackness! Perhaps if I closet one, then I’ll fit in somewhere. That was not a happy endeavor.
Two things catalyzed my journey to self-acceptance: realizing that God intentionally created me just the way I am, and fully appreciating the two cultures that co-mingle in my veins. I wrote What About the Children? 5 Values for Multiracial Families to help parents raise confident, grounded kids who like and understand themselves much sooner than I did.
It’s available now and I know you’ll find it helpful - whether you have mixed-race kids or not!
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