Margaret Wilkerson Sexton on Jacqueline Woodson, Octavia Butler, and Beloved’s sex scene.
Welcome to the Book Marks Questionnaire, where we ask authors questions about the books that have shaped them.
This week, we spoke to The Revisioners author Margaret Wilkerson Sexton.
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Book Marks: First book you remember loving?
Margaret Wilkerson Sexton: Mildred D. Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.
BM: Favorite re-read?
MWS: Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones.
BM: What book do you think your book is most in conversation with?
MWS: Kindred by Octavia Butler.
BM: A book that blew your mind?
MWS: Caucasia by Danzy Senna.
BM: Last book you read?
MWS: The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett.
BM: A book that made you cry?
MWS: Miracle’s Boys by Jacqueline Woodson.
BM: What book from the past year would you like to give a shout-out to?
MWS: These Ghosts Are Family by Maisy Card.
BM: A book that actually made you laugh out loud?
MWS: We Cast a Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin.
BM: What’s one book you wish you had read during your teenage years?
MWS: Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson.
BM: Favorite book to give as a gift?
MWS: Pachinko by Min Jin Lee.
BM: Classic book you hate?
MWS: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.
BM: Classic book on your To Be Read pile?
MWS: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.
BM: What’s a book with a really great sex scene?
MWS: Beloved by Toni Morrison.
BM: Favorite book no one has heard of?
MWS: Wild Seed by Octavia Butler (many people have heard of it but not enough).
BM: Favorite book of the 21st century?
MWS: The Known World by Edward P. Jones.
BM: Favorite book you were assigned in high school?
MWS: Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton.
BM: Book(s) you’re reading right now?
MWS: The Kindest Lie by Nancy Johnson.
BM: Favorite children’s book?
MWS: Jamaica’s Find by Juanita Havill.
BM: Book you wish would be adapted for a film/tv show?
MWS: The Lesson by Cadwell Turnbull.
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Margaret Wilkerson Sexton‘s debut novel, A Kind of Freedom, was long-listed for the National Book Award and the Northern California Book Award, won the Crook’s Corner Book Prize, and was the recipient of the First Novelist Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family. Her novel The Revisioners won the NAACP Image Award, is a California Book Award finalist and is available in paperback this August, from Counterpoint Press.
Margaret Wilkerson Sexton’s The Revisioners is out now in paperback from Counterpoint
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