by WALTER MOSLEY
New York Times Sunday Book Review
Literary Landscapes

I am what you might call a grandchild of Louisiana. My father was born there as were many of his friends and relatives. Most of my neighbors in Los Angeles came from there too — black rural folk who had traveled west through southern Texas on their migration to escape the South’s heavy hail of racial hatred. They came to California for the tattered shelter of mocking freedom that the Golden State had to offer people like them, poor people willing to work hard.

My father and his family brought the Deep South with them — barbecues and gumbos, dirty rice and soul food. They brought their strong accents and multiplicity of tongues, their histories from Africa, France, Native America mingled with generous drams of so-called white blood, European blood.

Louisiana flowed in that blood and across those tongues. Louisiana — a state made famous by Walt Whitman and Tennessee Williams, Ernest Gaines and Arna Bontemps, Kate Chopin and Anne Rice. These writers, from many eras, races and genres, took the voices of the people and distilled them into the passionate, almost desperate, stories that opened readers to a new kind of suffering and exultation. Read the rest of this entry »