By Sandra Kitt
Penguin Books, USA
New york
Paperback: $5.99
When W.E.B. DuBois wrote about the “challenge of the color
line” in his historic 1903 collection of essays, The Souls of Black
Folks, the scholar meditated on the schism between communities
of color and the Anglo power structure. Today, near the start of
another millennium, we seem just as obsessed by racial issues,
although today’s concerns are in some ways more ambiguous than
what DuBois and his contemporaries faced in segregated
America.
In recent years, numerous nonfiction titles have tackled
racial issues from a variety of perspectives and themes,
including those written by African American.
Such intellectually challenging and often controversial
writings reflect not only the myriad views that
abound on the subject of race, they also measure
the deep intensity such issues continue to hold for
us.
One fiction writer who relishes tackling social issues in her
highly stylized writing is Sandra Kitt. A genre writer, Kitt has
established a niche in the very competitive field of romance
novels. One generation ago, such stories featuring African
American heroines and heroes were virtually unheard of. Now
Kitt is part of a thriving legion of writers of color who have
found readers — and more importantly, publishers — willing to
look at love in parameters other than blond hair and blue eyes.
However, once she mastered the essentials of this genre — pacing,
conflict, resolution — Kitt says she looked for more
challenge as a writer. Her next book, which was just submitted
to the publisher in January, is called Between Friends.
Her
eighteenth novel, this upcoming book is one she describes as, “a
very layered look at the experiences of a biracial adult.” Previous
titles include: Suddenly, a novel touching on the impact of
pediatric AIDS in the African American community; and The
Color of Love, the story of the interracial attraction between a
white male cop and a Black female book designer. In her
current novel, Significant Others, she sketches perceptions of
love, identity and color in a provocative way.
“I’ve always been intrigued on a subconscious level about
people in my own family or among my friends who could pass
as white yet who clearly identified as African American,” Kitt
said. “So I wanted to bring this issue out of the closet while
trying to be fair to all perspectives.”
In her fictionalized account, Kitt has been true to the
subtle, and often contradictory, identity questions raised
within a community when a person of ambiguous identity enters
it. Her heroine, Patricia Gilbert, is a high school counselor in an
integrated setting. Patricia, with her full red hair and fair skin, is
an African American woman proud of her identity but often
forced to account for it. She encounters a newly relocated
biracial student, Kent Baxter, whose move from his mother’s
home in Colorado to his father’s fast-paced lifestyle in New
York is impelled by the boy’s desire to be closer to his African
American father.
