When Art Imitates Life

When Art Imitates Life

By Dr. Maxine Thompson
http://www.maxinethompson.com
http://www.maxinethompsonbooks.com

According to Wikipedia, The quote, “Art imitates Life” “has its most notable proponent in Oscar Wilde, who held in his 1889 essay The Decay of Lying that ‘Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life’.”

As an African American, I see things differently. I’ve always felt, in spite of having an African American President (President Obama) in the United States, racism is still like the elephant in the middle of the room in our country. We don’t want to talk about racism or deal with it—until something explodes.
Case in point. In my second novel, Hostage of Lies, (originally self-published as “No Pockets in a Shroud,” in 1997,) a white editor from New York challenged a scene that was clearly a case of racial discrimination. 

The year was 2009, and I was reissuing this same book (HOL) through a New York Publisher when this editorial comment was made. 

 She said that a black male being pulled over because he  was black and driving a Mercedes was out dated or unrealistic. True, I wrote this scene in 1996 in the original self-published book. I pointed out to her the scene was set in 1993.

 However, the word “racial profiling” wasn’t in our lexicon at that  time.

As a historical fiction writer, I was just capturing what happens to professional Black men, who were treated like criminals.

 Shortly thereafter, a high profile case where prominent Black Professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested for entering his own home took place. This incident hit the media like a tsunami.

 I sent the information to the editor, and the scene was left as it was. Racial issues had not changed much from 1993 to 2009.

When I wrote my urban crime novel, L.A. Blues, in 2008, I was perturbed about several murders of young Black teen athletes, which were perpetrated because of gang wars between the Blacks and Latinos here in LA.

Ironically, in my novel, the murder victim, 15-year-old basketball star hopeful, was named Trayvon. He was wearing a hooded black Starter jacket, and later, you find out why he was assasinated because of this outfit. Sadly, we now have the tragedy of Trayvon Martin’s murder.

As I re-read the funeral scene from LA Blues at the Black Writers on Tour Conference (www.blackwritersontour.com) which just took place on this past Saturday, 4-21-12, a chill rippled through me. It was taken from my poem, “Son of God Called Home Too Soon,” which I’d originally written for my 18-year-old nephew, who’d been murdered the year before (2008) in Detroit. (Since then, another great-nephew was murdered in Detroit on 1-10-12.) I used the poem in the funeral scene in LA Blues. As I asked in my poem, SOGCHTS:

“How many more of our young men must we lose
To acts of senseless violence and rage?
When will we learn to love and not hate,
To cherish and not exterminate?
Let’s wake up before we lose our entire future Black Race.”

Although I live in L.A., and my other family is in Detroit, our family is still suffering the loss of these two young family members.

So here we are again, except this time,  it’s real life. The year is 2012. Another young black male gone senselessly. Only this murder has been widely publicized.

Reminds me of the Emmet Till murder, though, this dog and pony show and travesty of justice  that went on with the subsequent arrest, then release of George Zimmerman.

In my novel, Hostage of Lies, I dealt with the LA riots, which is now celebrating its twentieth anniversary, as well as the Detroit riots, (both civil unrests’ which I lived through). In fact, LA Blues opens with the LA riots. I drew on my memory of being out making home calls in West Los Angeles and almost being barricaded by walls of fire and smoke on every street I drove down.

I could have stayed home that day, but being a dedicated social  worker, I went out into the field. I guess it was the writer in me that wanted to bear witness to our explosive history. That day reminded me of what Langston Hughes called, “A Dream Deferred” in his poem. All the deferred dreams found their way into ignited gas cans and Molotov cocktails.

Today I write about things I would like to see changed. I’d like to see no murders among Black or Brown young men. I address this social problem  in LA Blues’s acknowledgment.

After all, isn’t that our job as writers? To bear witness to the truth.