I know a white lady who has been writing her memoirs and is now trying to decide on a title for her book. I suggested “ From the black side of the tracks” . Coming from a poor, rural, small Mississippi town and raised in the 1950’s being the only white person on this side of the tracks played a significant roll in her development and her story. Would this name be offensive? The story is fascinating but will need extensive editing.
Certainly someone will take offense from that title especially if the book becomes a best seller and made into a movie. That way they can extract money from being offended.
These days any damn thing can be seen as offensive but in this case I can sort of see it.
She’s not black, so she’s not speaking from a black person’s perspective, which then makes it sound like she was an observer who is reporting on “what those black folk are like in their natural habitat”. I know that’s not how either of you mean it, but you asked so that’s my .02.
It’s not offensive. But that doesn’t make it a great title. There are a lot of folks from the “black side of the tracks”, who have written about that experience. She needs a title that highlights the uniqueness of her experience.
Her family was the only white family in a group of shacks on one country road, she grew up and played with her sisters and black kids, white kids would not play with them because they were poor. All of her mothers friends were black and as an adult she gravitated toward black friends even though they all married white men. They identified heavily with poor rural blacks. They picked cotton side by side with blacks and were the only whites in this town to do so.
The title is open but I suggested she somehow try to find a title that linked her to the rural black culture she grew up with.
How about “A Cotton Picking Moment” as the title?
I think that’s a mistake. Black people are going to argue that unless you’re actually black, you still don’t know what it’s like. White people wanting to read about black culture have a million options written by real black people.
From my perspective as a bookstore shopper: If there’s anything worth reading in those memoirs, it either hasn’t been mentioned, or it is the experience of someone who doesn’t quite fit into the culture she’s surrounded by. The title and cover of a book really do matter, and you only have ten seconds to sell me on why I should read your book and not one of a hundred thousand others.
Returning to whether it is offensive or not: I don’t think any reasonable person can think the title is offensive by itself. In the context of her overall book, there’s some possibility that it will take on offensive connotations, but that will really be the fault of the text more than the title.
This is where a little confusion come in. A lot of her story deals with the culture shock she went through after leaving rural Mississippi and trying to fit into her new mostly white surroundings. She has always identified as white, was just never comfortable around whites. She freely admits to being raised in a very racist enviroment which was confusing because they only socialized with other poor blacks. They were considered poor white trash by the whites who only associated with them to buy eggs or use them for farm work or domestic help.
No part of the story deals with feeling like a black person, only feeling more comfortable around blacks. This is mainly covered only in the opening chapter where she explains the feeling of low self esteem she has had to deal with. The past 25 years she has worked with girls in alcohol and drug recovery and finds herself in high demand amoung a lot of the young and older black girls who have gone through experiences that she can relate to.
Offensive? Meh.
A very poor book title choice? Definitely.
My advice to would-be authors based on decades of experience working in either libraries or the book publishing industry is that if your book is published and it doesn’t offend somebody, it’s not getting distributed widely enough.
As the yellowed and tattered maxim on my office wall reads: ***You are not writing effectively unless you piss off as many people as you please.
***Even the very gentle and courtly Jimmy Carter’s writing on similar topics have infuriated a good part of the audience.
If you have to explain why it’s not offensive, it’s probably more trouble than it’s worth, even if you’re right.
“Life On The Other Side Of The Tracks” or “What It’s Like On The Other Side Of The Tracks”. Almost any words of comparing without identifying a race as White, Black or Etc… Such as: “There Are Less Fortunate Races On Both Sides Of The Tracks”.
The Bottom Line Is It’s Your Title/Story OR We Will Change It!!!
At the risk of being labeled “offenderati”, these suggestions are more bothersome than the one suggested by the OP. “Life on the Other Side of the Tracks” implies that black people are “other”. And that the reader is NOT the “other” being referred to. Sorry, I don’t want to read a book that presumes I come from a certain perspective.
It also doesn’t accurately portray the writer’s experience. She’s presumably writing the story because she felt more kinship towards the people she grew up with than her own “skinfolk”.
The memoir seems to be about of how it feels to straddle two worlds–one black, one white. So something like “Straddling the Tracks” makes the most sense to me.
Agreed. Even “Life On the Wrong Side of the Tracks,” which is the way I’ve always known the phrase.
How do you leap to that conclusion? The “other” side of the tracks is the one you aren’t on. It could be from the perspective of the poor blacks looking at rich villas with their swimming pools, every bit as easily as from the perspective of the privileged whites looking at the tarpaper shacks of the poor blacks. i.e., you’re projecting, a little.
The fact is, our cities are divided, and there are “other neighborhoods.” It isn’t “othering” to acknowledge this fact, any more than it is racist to say “There is racism in this country.”
(Where I come from, it’s “The Other Side of University Avenue.”)
The proposed title isn’t even accurate. As mentioned, the wrong side of the tracks aren’t populated with blacks alone.
How about: Poor White Trash: How I was Recycled
Not offensive, but not a good title.
Go look at the memoir section of he bookstore. Most of the titles you see are going to be evocative-- often a somewhat cryptic phrase like “The Liars Club” or “Don’t Lets go to the Dogs Tonight” or “The Glass Castle.” You pick them up and say “Oh, what is this about?” THEN you get to the subtitle and think “Growing up a white sharecropper in black Mississippi? That sounds interesting!”
Why is that? Because what makes a memoir good or not is not the “hook”- it’s not the setting or whatever it is that makes that author’s life interesting. It’s the insight that the writer is able to draw from their lives, and the general quality of their writing. Readers don’t want a documentary account of some interest situation. They want an emotional journey into the author’s mind. So a food memoir title need to demonstrate that ability.
It’s the same with literature. Would you want to read “A Guy Who Killed Someone” or “Whale Hunting”? Good books generally don’t have extremely literal titles. They leave a bit of mystery and make the reader want to know more.
Do you not see what I’m saying at all? Or do you see it, but just think your interpretation is the right one?
But that’s not what the story is about.
What about something like, But I Grew Up There, Too: A White Child’s Experience Growing Up in the Black Part of Town.