Europe was a very contentious subject in literature and yet jazz musicians still depended on Europe. Now it's not such a big deal.

What happened after World War I was disgraceful. Most veterans, like my great-uncle, were squashed back into place. Congress couldn't pass an anti-lynching bill. The World War II generation, though, wasn't going to take it.

I think that the Vietnam War era is important because we tend not to want to revisit it. For black people, there was the temptation of disaffection. People looked for alternative ways to express themselves personally and politically, people doubted the system, and there was the terrible kind of division in black America between a radical leadership and a much older, compromising leadership.

The rise of fascism in Europe sent most Americans home. Some black American communists who had emigrated to the Soviet Union perished in Stalin's purges of the late 1930s.

In her excellent, entirely readable Richard Wright, Hazel Rowley accomplishes what [previous biographer] Michel Fabre would have liked to do with once-guarded letters, aging witnesses, previously unidentified girlfriends. . . . Mostly, Rowley concentrates on telling Wright's very powerful story.

Criticism shouldn't be a performance that upstages the work it's talking about.

It's not true that voting doesn't make a difference. To check out is political suicide. This is especially true for our young black artists. You don't want to inadvertently end up doing someone's bidding.