Correcting a common misconception.

Smith, Charles Michael

To the Editor:

I first learned of Alice Walker: A Life by Evelyn C. White in the pages of this journal. As one who read and admired Walker's The Color Purple, I immediately obtained a copy of the biography and found it hard to put down.

In her letter [Jan.-Feb. 2005] correcting some errors in a review of the book [Nov.-Dec. 2004], she stated, "I am mindful of the plethora of facts and figures in Alice Walker: A Life." There is, however, one fact that escaped her. On page 436, she writes: "She [Alice Walker] thought of [James] Baldwin's courage, during the McCarthy era, in publishing Giovanni's Room (1956) with its daring theme of interracial gay love." In point of fact, both of the central characters, David (a young American) and Giovanni (an Italian), were white, so theirs could not have been an interracial relationship. In the first paragraph of Giovanni's Room, David describes himself as having blond hair and "ancestors [who] conquered a continent." What could be plainer than that?

--Charles Michael Smith, New York City