Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timberd.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today, my guest is Susan Strait, her novel, Take One Candle, Light a Room,

it's published by Pantheon, and before we even begin to talk about the book,

I want to say I've been talking to Susan for 20 years from her first book, Aquabuggy.

When she came into the room, I thought, this can't be the writer.

The writer I read had written about a whole community, a whole black community in Riverside.

She was blonde, extraordinarily light-skinned, and I didn't even know how to ask a question. Now, this is her

seventh book, and she's been writing about what it's like within the African-American, within the

black community, to grow up, light-skinned, blonde.

And first of all, are you a black writer in the community?

Tell me about what you are.

Well, if you ask my kids, I'm still a short blonde mom

who's really annoying most of the time. And you know what?

I think for all these 20 years, I have feed in both places. So maybe I'm almost like a spy because I can

be with a group of all white people and I can hear the worst things ever possible. And I actually enjoy

...