Quincy Troupe, Toni Morrison and Ishmael Reed

Nobel Prize-winner Toni Morrison, Ishmael Reed and Quincy Troupe participated in a fascinating and heated discussion at the Harlem Arts Salon in New York on Sunday, Feb. 24.  Baraka Books publisher Robin Philpot and partner were among the 80-plus guests who packed into Margaret and Quincy Troupe’s home in Harlem.

Ishmael Reed has published his two latest nonfiction books with Baraka Books, Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media, The Return of the Nigger Breakers (2010) and Going Too Far, Essays about America’s Nervous Breakdown (2012). In getting his work published here in Quebec, Ishmael Reed likens himself to the fugitive slaves who came up here via the underground railroad. His reason for turning to Baraka Books: his agent said that no US publisher would touch his book Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media.

Read more about the Harlem Arts Salon.

Toni Morrison told people how, as a child, she learned the power of writing. She was about four years old. With her sister, she was writing with chalk on the sidewalk. They decided to write a word written big on a nearby wall:  “F    U …” Her mother saw the word and went berserk. They had to get the mop and water and clean the sidewalk before they went home to punishment. “That’s when I learned about the power of writing,” laughed Toni Morrison.