Her brilliant career

Suzette Harrison doesn’t live the supposed glamorous life of a stay-at-home fiction writer, scribbling her heart out from sunrise to sunset over a cup of tea. Instead, she writes while her 18-month-old daughter is napping. And any stereotypes her life might break in the vision of the literary world, her books break as well. Perusing rows of novels in the romance section of the bookstore, it’s rare to find a book that escapes from the stereotype. Topless Fabios with too-long hair and unbuttoned white shirts lean over helpless women with curly locks who wear too much pink. But Harrison, a Sacramento writer, doesn’t fit into that Danielle Steele mold. The cover of her debut novel, Living on the Edge of Respectability, published in 2002, says so. A tall black man with angular features and a violet shirt (completely buttoned up) stands behind (instead of holding up) two females, one skeptically folding her arms and the other staring steadfastly. Her characters don’t live in the romanticized scenery of New York or Paris. They live in Sacramento, Harrison’s hometown.

What is Living on the Edge of Respectability about?

It’s an up-and-coming tale of three 30-something African-American characters set in the Sacramento area. They each have different issues in their lives they’re struggling with. It’s a fun book, but at the same time it’s dealing with some very serious issues such as foster care or one of the women is dealing with obesity. We have a young man who doesn’t know how his mother died. His mother died when he was only 3 years old. So they’re on a search.

Did you base the characters on people you’ve met?

One of the main characters here, Reina, she is inspired by a living being.

Is the woman aware that she’s the inspiration?

No. I think she’d actually be flattered, but I’ve never told her that she was the impetus. You know what’s funny is that after my family and my friends had read it, they came and were like, “I saw my grandmother in her.” It’s amazing how readers are able to connect with characters and feel like that’s part of my life or that’s someone I know, and you never imagine that when you sit here just writing it, a character or a story, someone would come and say, “That’s me.”

When did you begin to write novels?

In 1991, I had that light-bulb moment when I just thought I want to be a writer. I wrote a romance novel. It had an African-American heroine and an Italian hero, and do you know what I did? I sat on it because at that time back in ‘91 or ‘92, I felt there was no market.

In spite of that belief, what made you publish Living on the Edge of Respectability?

I was doing a senior honor’s thesis at UC Santa Barbara, and I went into the local Barnes & Noble. I walked down the aisle, and I was like, “I’m gonna look at romance,” because I hadn’t read romance since high school. I walked down the aisle, and I almost dropped to the floor when I saw this romance cover with an African-American heroine. I was amazed, and that was a lesson for me because I had the thought years ago and did nothing with it.

How is your book different from other contemporary African-American novels?

In Living on the Edge of Respectability, you have an undercurrent of Christianity. These characters have a particular faith in God without it being preachy. It’s a departure because a lot of books today, the contemporary African-American books, are just inundated with profanity and it’s spicy and enticing perhaps, but I know there are readers out there with such sensibilities as my own that will appreciate not having to count the expletives on one page. A third departure is that you won’t find promiscuity. It has one particular character where that is part of her past, but she’s currently dealing with that when the book begins.

Do you have plans for future books?

When Perfect Ain’t Possible will come out in stores in 2004, and it is basically a romantic comedy, and actually I’m working on my third book now. It is really a springboard off Living on the Edge of Respectability and two of its backstage characters. I have books that are in me—deep, down-home kinds of books. I have ideas dealing with the 1940s, dealing with segregation, with Jim Crow laws, dealing with the South, and things of that nature. Those books are not as easy to write, and therefore I have somewhat pushed them to the back for later when I’ve arrived at a point in my life when I have the time and I have the mental energy to write these books.