NPR scored some time with Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, who discussed her forthcoming book, A Mercy.

Got some time? Hear La Morrison read from the book.

She also explained why she chose to focus on the theme of servitude — which includes, but is not only slavery:

Morrison says she wrote the novel in an effort to “remove race from slavery.” She notes that in researching the book, she read White Cargo by Don Jordan and Michael Walsh, and was surprised to learn that many white Americans are descended from slaves.

“Every civilization in the world relied on [slavery],” says Morrison. “The notion was that there was a difference between black slaves and white slaves, but there wasn’t.”

White slaves, called indentured servants, were people who traded their freedom for their passage to America.

“The suggestion has always been that they could work off their passage in seven years generally, and then they would be free,” says Morrison. “But in fact, you could be indentured for life and frequently were. The only difference between African slaves and European or British slaves was that the latter could run away and melt into the population. But if you were black, you were noticeable.”

*Photo (by Timothy Greenfield Sanders) from NPR

As I do every Sunday, I read The New York Times Book Review today, with special attention to the best sellers lists.  

Last week, I noticed that Letter to My Daughter, by Maya Angelou, had made the list.

This week, to my surprise, it even rose on the list, from No. 7 to No. 5.

So here’s my question: Why? Are there really that many Maya Angelou fans out there?

If you are an Angelou fan, I really want to know: What’s so appealing about her work?

I recognize her importance as a figure who brought certain issues to light, but I’ve always questioned the quality of her literary output. Her poetry is maudlin (take the poem she read for Bill Clinton’s first inauguration, for example) and Hallmark-like, and I’ve never been especially engaged by her memoirs or other writing. Trust me, I’ve tried.

So Angelou lovers, change my mind. What’s so great about her work? What am I missing?

After the jump, the other black authors on this week’s best sellers lists.

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Author Tayari Jones has agreed to give another hardcover, first-edition copy of her touching second novel about infertility, The Untelling, to a WriteBlack reader.

Here’s how you win: Read Tayari’s post, and then read and comment on my ‘Black women and the desire for children, redux‘ post below.

Several of you contacted me during the first giveaway, so here’s a second chance.

She’ll choose the winner randomly this coming Friday, Oct. 31. 

• Fresh from elevating BET from completely irrelevant to just mostly irrelevant, Reggie Hudlin has now turned his sights to reinventing Black Panther
• Speculative-fiction author Nalo Hopkinson will appear at my alma mater, Georgetown University, in March 2009
• Per Seressia Glass, the third of the fun Vegas Bites books will be out in November…ish
• Doesn’t look as though Amazon will put out that new Kindle before the end of the year
• What’s so great about the Kindle
• It’s true. Teenagers really are reading so-called street lit

The giveaway is over! I’ve found my winner for the Tayari Jones book giveaway.

Thanks to all the participants.

(And by the way, you folks are fast!)

In honor of National Infertility Awareness Week, author Tayari Jones has agreed to give away one hardcover copy of her fabulous 2006 book The Untelling, one of the few books that has ever affected me emotionally enough to make me cry (in a good way, y’all), to a lucky WriteBlack reader.

Not familiar with the award-winning Jones? You should be.

The Untelling was one of the most sensitive fictional portrayals of infertility — and certainly one of the few about a black woman — I’ve ever read. Her debut novel, Leaving Atlanta, was an exquisitely detailed depiction of the lives black kids in Atlanta who are trying to make sense of their world in the era of the child murders that have been attributed to Wayne Williams.

And if any of you follow her Twitter feed, you’ll know that she’s energetic and dedicated enough to get up before dawn each day to work on her next novel.

All that to say that the first person to e-mail me at writeblack[at]writeblack.com will get a copy of The Untelling.

ON EDIT: We have a winner already. Thanks for participating, everyone.

When I look at photos of the Obama family, my heart aches. It’s not about Barack and Michelle, as lovely as they are. And it has nothing to do with politics, or the history that could be made if a black man is elected president of the U.S.

It’s the kids. Malia and Sasha.

Little black girls, who look like and plainly adore their mother and father. I want them. I really, really want them. But my chance of having a little girl diminishes by the day. I’m one of the thousands of black women in America who are, for all practical purposes, infertile.

You know, barren. Unproductive.

Dried up. Useless. Or whatever term you prefer to use.

It is again National Infertility Awareness Week, and like most women in this position, I’m still a little shocked that I actually, you know, care. When my husband, Eric, and I married in 2002, I was still in my late 20s and not terribly excited about the prospect of becoming a parent. Eric and I had a hazy idea that we wanted two, or maybe even three, kids, but since neither of us had really wrapped our minds around what it would mean to be somebody’s parents, we realized we weren’t quite ready. We agreed to put off trying to conceive for a year.

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In the Night of the Heat: A Tennyson Hardwick Novel

Blair Underwood, Tananarive Due, Steven Barnes

Atria

2008

My husband doesn’t like much fiction.

He can deal with Tom Wolfe occasionally, and, like me, is a fan of the late, great Octavia Butler. But for the most part, he prefers nonfiction books about politics, architecture, technology and design.

Case in point: Nearly a decade ago, before we started dating, I gave Toni Morrison’s Beloved to him to read. To this day, I don’t know whether he finished it. Frankly, I don’t want to know, because if he hasn’t read it by now, I may have to file for divorce.

It’s pretty rare to find a novel we can agree on, but to my surprise, that happened with the publication of last year’s Casanegra, the steamy mystery by the trio of Blair Underwood, Tananarive Due and Steven Barnes. Hubby and I both adored it, and I considered it one of the most fun books I read in 2007.

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I can’t believe I forgot!

A year and six days ago, I made my very first post here at WriteBlack.

Thank you for sticking with me through this journey. I’ve been enjoying it, and I hope you have, too.

Onward and upward.

The New York Observer explains:

Soon, though, people may find themselves compelled to be more wary. Only the most established agents will be able to convince publishers to take a chance on an unknown novelist or a historian whose chosen topic does not have the backing of a news peg. The swollen advances that have come to represent all that is reckless and sinful about the way the business is run will grow, not shrink. Authors without “platforms” will have a more difficult time finding agents willing to represent them.

…

Could it be that the structural obsolescence everyone’s been crowing about for the past decade—defeat at the hands of digital media, Amazon.com, etc.—would have been less painful than this, or at least more world-historically meaningful? What lies ahead instead is a necessary scaling back of ambition: an age in which the gambling spirit that has kept book publishing exciting gives way to a shabby, predictable environment that cows its participants into avoiding all things adventurous and allowing only the proven few a seat at the table.

Read the whole thing. And keep in mind that if white authors are catching colds in this environment, then it’s likely that black authors will have pneumonia.