Driven by the Market: African American Literature after Urban Fiction

Kenneth W. Warren’s What Was African American Literature? (2011) compelled literary historians to question deeply held assumptions about periodization and racial authorship. While critics have taken issue with Warren aligning African American literature with Jim Crow segregation, none has examined his account of what came after this conjuncture: namely, the market’s wholesale cooptation of Black writing. By following the career of African American popular novelist Omar Tyree, this essay shows how corporate publishers in the 1990s and 2000s redefined African American literature as a sales category, one that combined a steady stream of recognized authors with a mad dash for amateur talent. Tyree had been part of the first wave of self-published authors to be picked up by major New York houses. However, as soon as he was made to conform to the industry’s demands, Tyree was eclipsed by Black women writers who developed the hard-boiled romance genre known as urban fiction. As Tyree saw his literary fortunes fade, corporate publishing became increasingly reliant on Black book entrepreneurs to sustain the category of African American literature, thereby turning racial authorship into a vehicle for realizing profits.