Smith, with her predecessors, could help do for blacks what Saul Bellow, fifty years ago, did for Jews; that is, make them normal subjects for the novel, no longer people who have a sign over their heads saying “Jew” or “Black” but regular people, with the same privilege of texture—of self-contradiction and error, and thus of tragic force—as white people.

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 9:42 PM  |