So pleased to publish this interview with writer Ayana Mathis, author of THE TWELVE TRIBES OF HATTIE, in the April issue of The Brooklyn Rail. “I … write from character and from story … But one of the things very present in my mind—once I realized I had a book—is class. It’s as important to this book as is the Great Migration, this notion of the way, in a pre-civil rights world, where no one had any money, how we decided on class. Which had everything to do with what neighborhood you lived in, or how light or dark you were, and your diction—all these kinds of things.” –Ayana Mathis, The Brooklyn Rail, April 2013.

http://www.brooklynrail.org/2013/04/books/ayana-mathis-with-jenine-holmes