ReviewTaking a bold leap forward from his already-entertaining debut novel
A Liar's Tale, Andre Coleman undertakes the history of black America over the last 40 years through the eyes of one family, mixing the personal and the political while creating a work that could ultimately stand as the African-American Wonder Years.
--Carl Kozlowski - Life the Final Frontier
RR: What inspired you to write Blackbirds: Volume 1?
AC: I have always been interested in this time period, and I wanted to show what it was like to be a black man. I mean, really getting into what we feel, how we think and the experience. So I decided to connect it to the entire black experience. Like a lot of folks, I wondered what I would have been like if I came up then. Would I have been one of the folks who marched or a kid who sang on the street corner? I have a real love for the music of the day. I couldn’t make up my mind, so I created characters that do both, and made them brothers. Then the book evolved and really became about the family.
When I got the book back from the printer I was disappointed. I sent him a proof with a lot of changes. He only made about half of them, so there are some typos. But that’s not stopping people from reading it. It burns me up, and I almost pulled the book off of Amazon, but a professor in Arizona emailed me and told me he was going to use it to teach his black history class, and he convinced me to leave it out there. I plan on making the corrections on the second printing. So these will be collector’s items!
RR: The trailer of the book showed a number of difficult to look at, but real events in history. Would you categorize Blackbirds... as historical fiction? Why/why not?
AC: The book is definitely historical fiction, but it’s also about family. It is a five volume look at the black experience through the eyes of one family. The people may not exist, but their experiences are real and moving. I also call it real “real fiction” because it pulls no punches. I get real about all of it; church, politics, the way black folks step on each other.
RR: Are there similarities between the experiences of the McCray family and your family during your teenage years?
AC: Well I am only 43, my mother’s maiden name is McCray and she is from Louisiana. So I use a lot of the little touches I learned about the south.Volume five is about me.
RR: What emotions do you hope your readers will experience as they read the last pages of the novel?
AC: All of them. I hate demographics. I don’t write heroes and villains. I write real people in real situations, hopefully that make the reader stop and think. But like real life some parts of the book are a tragedy, other parts are a romantic, funny and then there is the action and I love writing the history. Read it, you won’t be disappointed.
Born and raised in Southern California, Andre Coleman is currently the city reporter for Pasadena Weekly.
***
On
Sunday, September 16 at 3:00 p.m. (PDT), I'll continue to talk with Andre about his new novel and
Razor7 Publishing, his publishing company.
Join our discussion at:
www.blogtalkradio.com/therapturousreader.
In the meantime, visit his website:
www.razor7.com where you can get a signed copy of his novel!
Scroll down to my previous post to see the trailer for the novel!
