Mambo Hips and Make Believe

Fiction. Wanda Coleman's powerful new novel chronicles the friendship between two women -- one from the black ghetto of Los Angeles, one from its white middle-class suburbs. Both are aspiring writers, both scramble to pay their bills by pickup jobs like waitressing and editing pulp magazines. For two decades they share each others' troubles and triumphs in and out of work and love. Coleman focuses primarily on the white protagonist's point of view; as the story unfolds and the characters' roots are unearthed, however, we learn that there's no such thing as "pure" white -- only a mix of bloods concealed over time.