Susan has been pulling this crap since her first foray into literary minstrelry: "I've been to sorrow's kitchen and licked out all the pots"-- featuring a very large, very fierce, very hideous black woman on the cover of course. Talkin' that black taawk. I don't begrudge Miss Susan's white entitlement to continually 'represent' the black female experience through her most priveledged whiteness. I just question why black writers aren't granted this degree of freedom.

In this particular instance, the only writers fully qualified to represent the protagonist's experience--that of being a black slave--are all dead.

I guess that depends on how you want to define the word 'slave'.

This excerpt shows the complicated relationships of the odd legal status of various groups in those days near New Orleans, and gives an idea of the roots of the problems with integrity we have yielded today. Survival, disregard, murder and abused sexuality, all became themes still very much alive today. "Mississippi Mud" highlights the same themes, without the racial overtones, from the same area just a few years ago.

The protagonist of the novel is mulatto, not black. A "pure" white author has as much right to imagine her life as any "black" author. Why do blacks assume they can speak for mulattoes? They are not of the same race and the experiences are very different.

Yipes, it's not possible, apparently, to discuss a racial matter in an open forum without getting some flesh-crawly remarks.

'Mischling2nd', are you of German descent? I only ask because it's my experience that Germans (which is not a race, by the way) tend to advocate a 'Periodic Table of Elements' approach to Race...and 'mischling' is a (mildly pejorative) German word. I don't think 'Kim' is saying that 'blacks' must or should speak for 'mulattoes'...I think she has a problem with the carte blanche (no pun intended) that seems to be granted 'whites' to appropriate non-white Otherness in the name of entertainment. Whereas it's pretty hard to imagine a black person getting away with writing about, say, the life and times of a Swedish Fashion model. You can kinda see a Publisher going 'huh?' at such a book proposal

Maybe Ms. Straight was able to write what she did because she first spent time reading the many thoughtful and profound books by black authors describing their experience. And then made use of that valuable writer's tool, the imagination.

So whoop-de-do for her then. She's decided to make her (vast) fortune writing first person narratives of black women under the lash, and maybe she's a particular brand of sensitive intelligent white womanhood whose ears are well atuned to that of her colored sisters. I'm thrilled to pieces for her. Now can black women writers have that same freedom? They've had no other choice but to listen to every word of their white sisters so perhaps they can start doing first person narratives on white Ukrainian sex slaves or whatever. Think the publishing world and white america will accept it?

Whoa - does anyone know anything about Straight's background?

She's white, yes, but grew up poor in an otherwise all-black neighborhood in Riverside, CA. (And lived there for a long time as an adult, too.)

As far as I can tell, she's got more bona fides for writing about cross-cultural experiences than many other novelists. Also, where are the protests against her last book, about Mexican illegals living and working in CA?!

Might be best to read her work before condemning her, no?