Considering the Lives of Black Women

Golden in the author of the new memoir, "Saving Our Sons." She writes about bringing up her son in Washington D.C., where homicide is the leading cause of death for Black males between 18 and 24. In the preface, she says, "I stopped work on a novel in order to write this book. The unremitting press of young lives at risk, the numbing stubbornness of annual, real-life death tolls, rendered fiction suddenly unintriguing, vaguely obscene."

Writer Marita Golden. Her new novel, "Long Distance Life," examines half a century in the life of a black middle-class family in the other Washington, D.C., the one not filled with shiny buildings and corridors of power. Previously, Golden published a widely acclaimed memoir, "Migrations of the Heart."

Marita Golden became part of a group of black radicals as student at American University in Washington, D.C. After graduating from the Columbia School of Journalism, Golden married a Nigerian and moved to Nigeria with him. Golden was shocked by the role of women and wives in the country, which she found stifling. Taking her son with her, Golden left her husband and returned to the United States. She discuss her life and experiences in her memoir "Migrations of the Heart."