SOURCE: "Authors Who Were Excluded Speak Volumes about Cultural Barriers," in Los Angeles Times, July 22, 1998, pp. El, E6.

[Coleman is an author and poet. In the following essay, Coleman imagines abolitionist Sojourner Truth's response to Modern Library's list, consisting of objections to notable omissions and of surmises about the board's reasoning.]

"Ain't I a writer?" Had she been a contemporary novelist, Sojourner Truth might be asking that question this morning over her steaming, thin-mouthed mug of freshly brewed gourmet coffee, spilling just a tad as her dark hands tremble with a newly aroused militancy inspired by the Modern Library's choices for the best 100 novels of this 20th century. Not a single black woman novelist was considered a fine enough writer to be included. Not Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God), not Toni Morrison (The Bluest Eye), not Ann Petry (The Street).

"Good Goddess, what an outrage...