Man, I hope Debra Dickerson bounces back. It hurt me on levels to read and hear about what she’s going through.

A confession: While listening to the latter yesterday, I have to admit that I thought that when one day I had “arrived” as a writer, Debra Dickerson—someone who’d I defined as a leftist contrarian—would be my “enemy.”  (I loved her autobiography, An American Story, even when I disagreed with it.) In my fantasy, we’d “fight” via dueling essays in elite white magazines, and I’d live (well) off of it. Ah, the dreams of Cult-Nat Afro-Saxons….. 🙂

Her story, as articulated on NPR’s “Tell Me More” with Michel Martin yesterday, is more proof that the Great Pumpkin is not coming for wannabe fulltime writers—defined here as people who write essays, books and articles for a fulltime living. Particularly for Black ones. Alas, the experiences of these sisters, when coupled with the army of I-used-to-be-powerful-Black-journalist-but-now-I’m-a-blogger-without-a-book-contract now out here, it’s pretty clear that Black America has no real Black intellectual-literary class.

JULY 29th UPDATE: I think this reality applies also to another of my writing heroes, Amy Alexander. She seemingly didn’t understand that she was being shifted from a respected journo post to that of a nonprofit staffer (read: flunky :)).