African American issues

Novelist Randall Kenan. He was raised in the rural, North Carolina, a part of the country in which he says "it's hard to distinguish between the myths and reality." His new book, "Let the Dead Bury Their Dead," is a collection of stories, about a five-year old who can hear the dead speak, an Asian man who falls from the sky and encounters mindless violence and racism, and a conventional widow who copes with the revelation that her grandson is a homosexual, and others.

Writer and professor Gayle Pemberton. She is associate director of Afro-American Studies at Princeton University. Her new book, The Hottest Water in Chicago: on family, race, time, and American culture, is a collection of autobiographical essays. Pemberton was born into a northern black middle-class family in the late 1940s. (by Faber & Faber)

We mark the anniversary of Malcolm X's birth with historian and writer Clayborne Carson editor of "Malcolm X: The FBI files." CARSON is the Director and Senior Editor of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers Project. He also co-edited the companion reader to the PBS series "Eye on the Prize."

Writer Jess Mowry. His novel, "Way Past Cool," is about an Oakland gang. He works with inner city youths in Oakland, California. Mowry used to be in a gang himself. In 1988, he bought a used typewriter for 10 dollars and started writing. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc.) (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

Sweet Alice Harris lives in Watts, in South Central Los Angeles. She started and runs Parents of Watts Working With Youth and Adults after the Watts riots of 1965. She says she knew last week's riots would be bigger than Watts. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

William Julius Wilson, professor of sociology at the university of Chicago. He's written several books on urban poverty and the underclass.

Janet Clayton, assistant editor of the editorial page of the Los Angeles Times. We spoke with her yesterday; we check in again with her today.

Ice-T, the Los Angeles based rap musician.

Tony Massengale, who works with gangs in Los Angeles.

From the Los Angeles Times, Assistant Editor of the editorial page Janet Clayton. In addition to functioning in her official media capacity, she'll be leaving work early to visit her mother, who lives in the curfew zone.