Music: “I’ve done homework, college papers on Ice Cube’s first record and I’m still listening to it now. But also, it has never dominated Whitehead’s work, which has ranged in nine previous books over areas as diverse as elevator inspection, the World Series of poker and the zombie apocalypse. For a start, it’s the subject (often the only one) that black writers are always asked to offer opinions about – an architecture of expectation that builds itself up around us. Long before our conversation, I’d resolved that I wouldn’t let the topic of race dominate it. What were the odds that the day after he wrapped up a fictional contemplation of “how we pull ourselves together” in the aftermath of such an incident, there would be another one? As Whitehead himself observes, the coincidence was proof of a point he’s always making: “If you write about fucked up racial shit, wait five minutes and something else will happen.” Whitehead had chosen to conclude his latest novel, Harlem Shuffle, against the backdrop of the Harlem riot of 1964, which erupted after a 15-year-old black boy, James Powell, was shot dead by police lieutenant Thomas Gilligan. It was, the first of three days of riots last year after the murder of George Floyd. “I put the book to bed, and then I got up the next morning and Minneapolis was on fire,” he says. S omething strange happened the morning after Colson Whitehead finished his forthcoming novel.
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