But McMillan has done less well with black female novelists.

While recognizing Baldwin's talents and need to rebel against the older black novelist, he finds fault with Baldwin's logic.

Such optimism, he says, is already evident among black novelists writing these days, even though most of them are still reflecting on the past in their fiction.

A nonfiction book by a black novelist and short-story writer that records the varied voices of black people across the United States.

Ellison became a true intellectual as no other black novelist had been.

As such, he and other young black novelists carry the full promise - and burden - of their country's future.

"There are more black novelists today than there ever were in the history of South Africa," he told me.

To serve as a literary history chronicling the emergence of black female novelists and the historical contexts in which they wrote.

"While black youths hungered for leadership," he writes, "the most honored living black American novelist had no young black disciples, students or friends."

Life, as far as the black novelist is concerned, if found paradoxically and exclusively in a police body bag.