Topic: Afro-Bougie Blues - What's in a title?
TheNextBigWriter is primarily a white group of authors, so I ask your opinion honestly, knowing your demographic.
My book is a collection of short stories about black middle-class people, women, families, going through situations that money can't fix. The stories that are particular to race include colorism, passing for white, corporal punishment and inter-racial dating. There are lots of other stories as well. The stories include topics like: abortion, alcoholism, teenage love, obesity and weightloss, bisexuality, incarceration, infidelity, domestic violence, death and dying.
The term bougie (or boujee more recently) is a term that everyone in the black community understands as people who have money, or act like they have money, and like to throw it around. It's actually not a nice term. Sometimes it suggests people who "have forgotten where they came from", i.e. people who cannot relate to being poor, or working class, and is used by working class black people to describe black people they think are snobby. (Not Uncle Tom/Clarence Thomas. That's an entirely different term.) I can't actually think off the top of my head of anyone famous who might be considered bougie, but my husband calls my family that all the time.
At any rate, all of my black friends IMMEDIATELY know what the book is about. But white people may not have any idea. The question is - should I change the title to something that is more "white-friendly", to appeal to a white female audience, or should I keep the title as is, because "it's a black thang, and you wouldn't understand".
