I have now made more than 30 appearances before Americans of every shade and hue. About a half-dozen of these lovely folks have asked me whether I am black.

Well, gosh.

I’m not, to my knowledge. I do have a broad nose and full lips, and the author photo on the back cover of To Love Mercy is black-and-white; so I probably look black to some who view that photo. A color photo would have revealed my pinkish skin tone though. My Dad was first-generation American of Russo/Baltic descent; my mom was second-generation American of German/Hungarian descent. Both were Jewish and both, or so I’ve always thought, were white.

But about a half-dozen (mostly black) people I’ve encountered have asked if I’m black … and one or two even seemed to want to argue about it.

What to make of this?

I’ve been taking it as a compliment, along the lines of: ‘Only a black author could have captured the black voices in this novel so accurately.’

But it’s also the flip side of the how-dare-you critique, which goes: ‘How dare you, a white man, expropriate our culture by writing in a black voice. How can you ever know the suffering of our people,’ &c.

I can’t. As a novelist, all I can do is imagine what such suffering might be like — for a 57-year-old black woman who’s “raised three sets of white folks’ children, and you two are the worst so far” … or her long-lost son, driven mad by a lifetime of bad luck, imprisonment and abuse … or an 11-year-old kid from the Chicago Bronzeville black ghetto, who sees his world in perfect clarity with no illusions … and hope I’ve gotten their voices right.

The test of my success in this endeavor has less to do with who I am than what I’ve written — whether readers black, white, brown, green or purple will pick up To Love Mercy then throw it aside in anger, annoyance, puzzlement, even simple boredom … or keep turning the pages.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. MEET JUDY JOSEPH THOMPSON ASSISI AT POLITICS & PROSE. Yes folks, it’s the chance you’ve been waiting for … now you can actually meet my one-and-only baby sister, model for that brat Beth in To Love Mercy, at Politics & Prose this Saturday. She’ll be there in the audience straight from Paramus NJ, gazing adoringly at her sadistic older brother, who’s never stopped picking on her since the day she was born. Admission is free but seats are going fast, so don’t delay … mark your calendar, 1 p.m. Politics & Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW (near Nebraska) in beatiful Washington DC. Don’t miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!