Slipping (25 page)

Why did you decide to write about crack use in your third novel?

I thought it was a relevant subject to write about, being that I write for and about the streets, and it wasn't too long ago that crack cocaine was taking us under at an alarming rate. It [the crack epidemic] still isn't over, but we're coming back from it.

Who do you want to read this book and how do you wish them to think about it?

Well, as a writer, I want anyone who wants to read it to pick it up, but mainly the young cats and girls out there who don't really understand what happened to a lot of us during this period in our struggle in America. Also, I don't think
that we realize just how much a lot of today's adolescents in the inner city were affected by crack cocaine.

You have three children. Do you discuss your books with them? What have you told them about your past history with drug abuse?

I have two daughters, one fourteen years old, the other thirteen, and a three-year-old son. I talk with my daughters about my books and hope they get something out of them. I have talked with them at length about addiction and addictive personalities, which seem to run in my family.

Some people might see
Slipping
as a cautionary tale while others might see it as an exploitation of a serious problem. What would you say to each of these judgments?

If anyone can see this as being exploitation—simply put— they are a hater, and there's nothing I want to say to them.
Slipping
is purely a cautionary tale, but I couldn't just say, “Do drugs and die!” I had to give them something to latch on to.

You mention in your author note that you think drugs should be legalized. What do you think that would accomplish and do you feel this way about all drugs? Also, you've been sober for many years. Does your desire to see drugs legalized conflict at all with your desire not to use them ever again?

I've been clean and sober for fourteen years now. I know
that legalizing drugs is an age-old argument, but I whole heartedly agree that it should be done, especially if the government can't seem to stem the manufacture, distribution, and sales of these illegal substances in our great country. As we saw in the old days, prohibition does not work, instead it spawns a black market for said prohibited substances. Along with these black markets, such things as wholesale violence and a certain degree of lawlessness accompany them hand-in-hand.

If your children wanted to experiment with drugs, would you let them? If yes, at what age? And with what drugs?

No, I would never condone any experimentation with drugs by them at any age. Though I know that one day they will become adults and have the right to make choices in their lives such as drug use, I will still never condone it and they can never do it around me.

A lot of your fans are in prison and feel that you are particularly good at describing “the life” on the streets and in the joint. Do you think people who haven't experienced some of what you write about firsthand will be able to relate to your characters anyway?

Hopefully so, I like to think that I break it down enough for anyone to catch on. I think that the inner city culture has always been sort of a phenomenon to outside cultures and they like to take a peek at the way some of us live. I mean there are billion-dollar examples of this such as hip-hop.

How do you think crack changed the urban African American community? Do you think that if crack hadn't become popular that something else would have caused the same problems or is there something specific about the consequences of using/introducing this drug?

Most definitely, yes. Crack changed the urban African American community. It divided us even more than we were. It turned kids into killers, and killers into kings for a short while. A countless number of my brethren languish behind bars and many a corpse grows moldy in its coffin because of crack cocaine. If it wasn't crack that struck us so hard, it would have been something else because the black race in urban America was waiting on something to assuage our existence. What better than something that could make you feel good or feel rich? As babies of the sixties and seventies our psychological makeup made us easy prey for crack cocaine, a potent mixture of problem-solving, mind-numbing escapism.

Which character in Slipping do you relate to the most? Say a little about how you are creatively inspired.

I like to think that I relate to them all because I created them, and that makes them all my children, be they good or bad. I'm usually inspired by the things that ail the people around me—my family, friends, neighborhood, community, city—and crack cocaine during the late eighties and the nineties affected so many of us, it was and is ridiculous.

What is most important to you about Slipping? Getting across a message or providing a good, entertaining read? What do you want your readers to take away from this particular book?

I wanted to do both. Like I mentioned before, it wasn't an ad for drug prevention; it's a novel, so it has to be entertaining to some degree. But it also has to have some imagination to make readers want to take the journey with you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Y. BLAK MOORE
is a poet and a former gang member who grew up in the Chicago housing projects. He is also the author of
Triple Take
and
The Apostles.
Blak has three children and lives in Chicago. You can reach him via e-mail at [email protected].

Slipping is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the
products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance
to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2005 by Yanier Moore
Reading group guide © copyright 2005 by The Random House Publishing
Group, a division of Random House, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by One World Books, an imprint of The Random
House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

One World is a registered trademark and the One World colophon
is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Moore, Y. Blak (Yanier Blak)
Slipping: a novel / by Y. Blak Moore.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-54668-5
1. Teenage boys—Fiction. 2. Chicago (Ill.)—Fiction. 3. Drug addicts—Fiction.
4. Fatherless families—Fiction. 5. Policewomen—Family relationships—Fiction. 6. Crack (Drug)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3613.O569S58 2005
813'.6—dc22 2005040592

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