(Tattered Bookstore at Denver Airport. Photo Credit: Shelf-awareness.com)
Hi Write and Seekers,
I have some good news. Brown and Gay in LA has received pretty positive reviews from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus. In fact, Kirkus even gave it a “starred review,” which I’m really proud of because the book was reviewed by writers in the literary world, not in the academy. Brown and Gay in LA is my second book, and for this one, my #1 goal was to really step it up with my writing. These reviews let me know that I’m on the right track.
I got my sociology doctorate about a decade ago, and recently, I’ve been thinking about how much I’ve changed in terms of the shit I care about. There was a time when all I cared about was publishing in academic journals. In grad school, I learned pretty quick that publications were currency. There was one thing, though, I always found funny: the prestige of the publications (based on the rank of the academic journal or university press publisher) seemed to matter way more than the prose of the publication itself. If an article was published in the American Journal of Sociology or American Sociological Review, then it was deemed excellent—even if the article was boring as shit and the writing was terrible.
Now that I’m a decade removed from grad school, I am starting to realize something: I think deep down, I’ve always cared more about the writing than the research. In the academy, the research is the end goal. But for me, it always felt as if the research was a means to the writing. The reason I went to grad school was because I wanted to write books. When I told this to a professor in college, he told me that I first had get my Ph.D. if I wanted to write books (I realize now how wrong that is, but when you’re 19-years-old, you can’t tell whether professors are offering you good advice or just trying to create clones of themselves).
When I started writing my first book The Latinos of Asia: How Filipino Americans Break the Rules of Race, I was working at a university where I was no longer beholden to the “publish or perish” life. In order to earn tenure, I didn’t have to write a book, which freed me to write the book I wanted to write without penalty. I told the editor that I wanted to write a “Malcolm Gladwell-style” book. That is to say, I wanted to write a book that was accessible to people outside the academy. I wanted to write the kind of book that was sold at airport bookstores.
While that didn’t happen with my first book, I told my editor for Brown and Gay in LA that I wanted to write it more like a trade book (which is geared toward popular audiences) than an academic book (which is geared toward scholars). In total, the book took me about 10 years to write (from research to publication), but had I chosen to write it as an academic book, I probably could’ve finished it in half the time.
The decision to write it as a trade book meant I had to study the rules of the mainstream publishing world. I studied nonfiction writing as rigorously as I’d studied sociology. There were so many times when I felt like quitting and just reverting back to writing the book in the conventional academic way. Luckily though, I was able to join communities of writers outside the academy that really helped me stick it out. As I was writing this book, I had two writing groups: one consisting of scholars (whose feedback focused on the research), and another one consisting of writers engaged in creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and journalism (whose feedback focused on the prose).
Brown and Gay in LA isn’t a perfect book prose-wise, but as compared to my previous writing, I think I was able to work on my creative writing toolkit—dialogue, scene, emotion, pace, etc. It even has elements of memoir, which is considered faux pas in a traditional sociology book. It’s the best I could muster at this moment in time—and that’s perfect enough for me.
And hopefully, this one will make it to some airport bookstores.
All my best,
Anthony
P.S.
All that practice and studying of creative nonfiction must’ve worked because my next book is going to be published with Little, Brown. And you know who else is on the Little, Brown roster?
Malcolm Gladwell.
What I’m reading rn:
Dirtbag, Massachusetts by Isaac Fitzgerald.
So far, I’m enjoying it. I’m four chapters in, and it’s honest as f*ck. The perfect combination of insight and irreverence.
In case you aren’t familiar with Isaac, check out this interview with Isaac on Poets and Writers. Here’s another one on Boston.com.
Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World by Benjamin Alire Saenz. This is the sequel to Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe. No spoilers from me, but I’ll say this: This pair of books makes me nostalgic for the adolescence I never got to have. I’m kinda here for the queer POC YA subgenre.