‘Flung’ Into Controversy by Negative Book Review

Like love, literature has the power to provoke both delight and very nasty quarrels.

One such fight surrounds this week’s cancellation of a reading at Esowon, the independent, black-owned bookstore that is Los Angeles’ leading outlet for writing by African Americans. At the controversy’s center is Wanda Coleman, the prizewinning poet and fiction writer whose 14 books include “Mercurochrome,” a 2001 National Book Award nominee.

The facts of the situation are not in dispute; motives are:

Coleman is among the local African American writers included in a new anthology, “Griots Beneath the Baobab: Tales From Los Angeles,” published by the International Black Writers Assn. She and a number of her colleagues were scheduled to read from their work Wednesday at Esowon in Leimert Park. However, after Coleman’s harshly negative review of Maya Angelou’s latest book, “A Song Flung Up to Heaven,” appeared in the April 14 issue of The Times’ Book Review, the store’s owners, James Fugate and Tom Hamilton, asked the publisher to drop the poet from the roster of readers.

“We read the review, and we were so offended by it that we didn’t want her in our store,” Fugate said.

The publisher polled the 14 writers by e-mail. Seven voted to cancel the reading rather than agree to Esowon’s demand; two said the objectionable author should withdraw; one urged further negotiation; and four were undecided, according to e-mails that Coleman shared with The Times.

Fugate said that “while there is obviously nothing wrong with thoughtful criticism, the tone of this review was personal and ugly and unnecessarily so. Nobody is censoring her, but we don’t invite into our store people with whom we wouldn’t want to be in the same room. Actually, I hope more people read her review, because then they will come around to our point of view.”

Coleman, however, believes the store’s antipathy toward her extends beyond a single piece of criticism. Indeed, despite her standing as Los Angeles’ best-known African American poet, despite her many awards--including the 1999 Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets--despite the fact that her prestigious literary publisher, Black Sparrow, keeps all of her titles in print, Esowon does not stock any of Coleman’s work.

“This store is frequented by young black kids,” Coleman said. “This store’s customers are at the core of my readership, and its refusal to carry my books should not be lightly dismissed. To me it is bizarre.” But Fugate said it is a matter of commerce. “We don’t stock her books,” he said, “because they never sold. We will order them for people who want them. We recently ordered all of her books for a friend of hers who wanted them. Checking the computer, I see that two years ago, we sold precisely three hardcover copies of ‘Mercurochrome.’ Last year, we sold one in paper and one in hardcover.”

But the South Central-born Coleman, who said she met Fugate only once and very briefly, said she suspects there is more than economics to Esowon’s treatment of her books. It is her frankness concerning other African American writers the store finds objectionable, she said.

“There are things we don’t want” in Esowon, he said. “Last year, for example, we thought it would be interesting to have [Libertarian African American radio personality] Larry Elder speak. It was a big mistake. People were upset and yelling and screaming [when he did]. If we invited her into the store, it would be the same thing” because of her criticism of Angelou, whose work, Fugate said, sells.

Coleman takes exception to that view. “Historically, black authors have had a legitimate gripe that it was hard to get published and even harder to get reviewed,” she said. “When you did get reviewed, it was usually by dominant culture writers who ripped you to shreds. That experience has left a residue of rage” and reticence about criticizing other black writers’ work. “But to follow the dictate of silencing any sort of critical thinking by African Americans about African American literature is old thinking.

“The landscape has changed so much,” Coleman said, “that African American critics have an obligation to feel free to express themselves.” Silent solidarity “made sense at a certain point, but that time is past.”

Work in Progress

David J. Garrow is Presidential Distinguished Professor at Emory University’s Law School and author of numerous books, including “Bearing the Cross,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Martin Luther King.

“I’ve been working on a couple of magazine articles while awaiting the publication later this month of a book I co-edited with my colleague Dennis J. Hutchinson of the University of Chicago Law School. The book’s title is ‘The Forgotten Memoir of John Knox: A Year in the Life of a Supreme Court Clerk in FDR’s Washington.’ Mr. Knox died five years ago, and his manuscript was given to me by his closest living relative. She was a woman involved in Roe v. Wade, who I got to know while working on my book about that case (‘Liberty and Security: The Right to Privacy and the Making of Roe v. Wade’).

“His memoir recounts a pivotal year in the court’s history, the session during which Franklin Roosevelt’s plan to pack the court was shot down. Knox was the clerk for Justice James C. McReynolds, a drooling, racist, anti-Semite. He was the most reactionary of so-called ‘nine old men,’ as New Dealers called the justices who blocked so many of FDR’s reforms. The memoir actually has four main characters: McReynolds, Knox, the young social climber clerk ... and two fascinating African Americans, who were McReynolds’ maid and messenger.

“They are the actual stars of the book, since they come across as wonderful, hard-working human beings who persevere out of a sense of decency and duty in the face of McReynolds’ abuse and ingratitude.”