8 Questions for... Joshunda Sanders
Spotlight on Black Book Stacks
Joshunda Sanders is the author of Women of the Post, her debut historical fiction novel about the 855 Black women who served as part of the 6888th Central Postal Battalion — affectionately nicknamed Six Triple Eight — and several other books across genres, including a memoir, a journalism textbook and a novella. She works in Communications for a large philanthropy and lives in her hometown of the Bronx. Black Book Stacks is the home she built to write about books by, for and about folks from the Black Diaspora; her Substack builds on twenty years of her work in journalism writing book reviews for the San Francisco Chronicle, the Houston Chronicle, the Austin American-Statesman, O, the Oprah Magazine, Oprah Daily, the New York Times and the Boston Globe.
1. Why Substack?
I’m an early adopter, or at least I used to be, back when I was a newspaper reporter about 20 years ago and I was one of the youngest writers in the newsrooms where I worked. When I learned about Substack and its aspirations to be a different kind of platform, it reminded me of how I felt when Medium started paying some writers and inviting folks to think more broadly about what they could contribute. I have about the same number of subscribers to my relatively new Substack as I do to my blog — and this is not a six-figure situation. Learning new platforms like Substack to connect with readers is part of my purpose — as a writer, you have to go where your readers are or where they might be.
2. How long did it take you to find your groove?
I’m not sure if I’ve found my groove but I love the question because it reminds me of Terry McMillan, and How Stella Got Her Groove Back. I think walking in the path writers like Ms. McMillan paved for this generation of writers makes it possible for me to feel like I can take my time connecting with other writers and readers like you, really listen to the constellation of thinkers and dreamers in this intense time we’re in. I started writing and publishing a long time ago, in the late 1990s, before the Internet was something we all carried around with us everywhere and all the time. In any event, being an early adopter, I guess I have found a groove in a way because I am still writing about what I most love in the world and being inspired by the excellence of others who do the same, especially if they’re Black people, since it feels infinitely harder for us to find spaces where we can feel groovy.
3. How has it changed you?
I’m probably like most writers in that I am a private, reserved and introverted person. Writers know this paradox that we have to live of being all those things that most folks equate to being anti-social while also being either explicitly or implicitly voluntold to grow a following on social media basically by any means necessary and mostly to sell books. I have written about this paradox and for a long time I have wrestled with my resentment. Writing on Substack and interacting with folks via Notes has helped me ease some of that angst a bit. I still have my moments. But something about Substack feels intimate and more controlled than the other platforms I’m on. It doesn’t feel as performative, maybe. So I don’t drain my battery for creating other things when I am writing here or when I am thinking about writing here.
4. What mistakes have you made?
I’m not sure if it was a mistake but maybe: I wondered about the paid subscription model when I first started and I was thinking about freelancing full time again in NYC and leaving the job I was doing. So I started Black Book Stacks with paid subscribers- I maybe had 5 or 6 people. I was working full time and trying to finish my novel so I felt bad asking people to pay for writing that I didn’t have space to do consistently. So I stopped asking for money and decided I would make money through using affiliate links or from people seeing me and learning my story and then buying my books.
5. To pay or not to pay?
For people whose main source of income is writing creatively or writing for a living, I think it’s only fair to ask subscribers to pay for content. I’m fortunate that I have almost always worked for organizations or institutions while writing and having that kind of stable income affords me the ability to offer what I write on Black Book Stacks for free. I also get most of the books that I write about for free from publishers, so to help offset the cost of books that I purchase on my own (these days it’s about a 60/40 split) I embed my Bookshop affiliate link in my reviews.
6. What artistic and technical choices have you made
In support of the greater intention behind creating the Substack, it felt important to note that some books about Black folks and Black life and history are authored by our allies or historians or others called to move our stories from the margins of the American story and imagination to the center. So the technical choices I’ve made is to say intentionally that this space welcomes any author and writer and book that illuminates Blackness and also helps to further humanize us. Maybe not always both. All of what we create that has not existed in this way is an artistic choice I think. Toni Morrison said if you have not read the book you want to read you must write it - so insofar as Black Book Stacks is not something I found elsewhere that I really wanted to see it has been an artistic choice to nurture and grow my reflections on the work of my peers and others I admire.
7. What’s been the effect on your writing?
It tickles me a little that this is slightly controversial but as for me and my house, you can only be the best writer possible if you read widely. So holding myself accountable by way of the Substack has helped me honor the rigorous reading that is required to be the good writer I aspire to be. It helps me see the symbiotic relationship between what I want to make and design in my work and what has come before. I think it has improved my respect for my craft and helped my creativity expand.
8. In it for the long haul?
100%. The legacy of Black writing in America is tied up with slavery like everything else. Our archives as a people have been truncated by unjust laws and practices that made it a crime for us to read and write. Now that we are free and our flourishing in literary community is no longer officially criminalized, I plan to lift us up to do my part as much as I can.
My thanks to Joshunda Sanders for joining this conversation. Her novel, Women of The Post is available at Bookshop.org by following this link.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/women-of-the-post/18847348
