Center Stage: Middle-Class African Americans

Guess who's coming to the beach barbecue this summer? Middle-class African Americans, that's who. In two new critically esteemed works, Lydia Diamond's play "Stick Fly" and Colson Whitehead's just-published semiautobiographical novel Sag Harbor, the focus is on middle-class blacks summering on, respectively, Martha's Vineyard and rural Long Island. While both works address some of the perennial challenges of African American life, they also depict their characters basking in such fair-weather pleasures as hanging out with family, eating waffle cones, playing board games and schlepping across sand dunes.

The Los Angeles Times writes: "As Americans of all colors reconsider the meanings and milieus of the African American experience in the Obama era, we may be witnessing a gradual sea change in the way that African American artists represent themselves and are perceived by others. In both 'Stick Fly' and 'Sag Harbor,' the characters intermittently analyze their language, relationships and socio-cultural heritage (or baggage) as African Americans. But what's also striking about these works is that they present their well-educated, witty characters as matter-of-factly inhabiting a world of leisure and affluence, a very different way than many white Americans may be used to seeing black people portrayed in popular culture."

Booker Rising response: There's been tons of ink written about America's poor blacks, who are "only" 26% of the U.S. black population. It's about time that the plural majority (47%) of us in the U.S. black middle class get more shine. Including the generation behind me, my father's side is fourth-generation middle class and my mother's side is third (arguably fourth) generation middle class. I can't identify with these "talkin'-'bout-the-ghetto" tales. Maybe I'll crack open a novel for once and read Sag Harbor (regular readers know that I'm a history-and-political-books kind of gal; novels tend to bore me). Good to see diverse stories being done on Black America.