Rose Whittier escapes the vice grip of her abusive husband when death comes knocking at the door for him. Ed and Charlotte experience the tenderness of love amid a welter of racial hatred at the peak of the Civil Rights movement. And two improbable friends form a lifelong friendship following an act of brutish violence.

The stories are part of 16 interwoven tales in Jabari Asim's 'Taste of Honey: Stories', a new work of historical fiction based on the year 1968, one of the most tumultuous in American history. That year marked the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights movement was at its historical apex.

Better known for his nonfiction, 'Taste of Honey' is Asim's first foray into fiction. And he does an excellent job at seamlessly weaving history and fiction into engaging stories that draw on everyday experiences of colorful characters who highlight an important period.
He is author of 'What Obama Means... For Our Culture, Our Politics, Our Future;' 'The N Word' and several children's books. He is editor of 'The Crisis,' the flagship NAACP magazine and a former columnist for the Washington Post. Currently, he is a scholar-in-residence at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He recently took time to talk to BV on Books about 'Taste of Honey':

BV On Books: What inspired you to write the book?
Jabari Asim: I was researching the 'N Word' at the time. Every day I had to immerse myself in a lot of challenging hateful material. I really needed a diversion, a way to wind down after dealing with such heavy such stuff. That's how I wrote the first couple of stories. I really just wanted to exercise my writing muscles by writing something completely different from what I was under contract to do at that moment.

BV: How did you come up with the idea for each story?
JA: Initially, I just wrote two or three stories set in the same time and place. I was sort of turned on by this idea of William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County, where he kinda created this fictional community based on a real community and also the short stories and novels of Ernest Gaines, whose stories took place in a fictional parish in Louisiana. So when I sat down to do fiction, I wanted to create this alternative reality, this sort of parallel community that was a fictional place based on where I grew up. In talking to my editor at the time, we started talking about these other fictional communities and how it might be interesting to set all the stories in one community. If we did that, the characters could be connected. They could walk in and out of each other's houses and show up at the same church, and that sort of thing.

BV: How did you settle on the year 1968, aside from it being the year of the assassination of Dr. King?
JA: I don't want it to read as a sentimental journey, but I do try to make the point, however gently that it was an important time in African American history. Our values were different. I think that young people are often dismissive of that history, but the people who lived through it could spend a little more energy saying, 'this is why it's important.' It's a little bit different in fiction than in nonfiction because you can't just say this is why it's important. You have to show why it's important. I tried to do that through the relationships between the various characters.

BV: Was writing historical fictional an easy transition for you?
JA: It allowed me to play to my strengths. I also think writing short stories was a little less daunting for me. I was able to write fiction in a smaller way opposed to doing this great epic novel, which I would love to do. I enjoy a reputation as a nonfiction writer so I wanted to ease into this other area where I'm the newcomer.

BV: The stories are well crafted. How did you develop the characters?
JA: In African American communities we all know these personalities who are just wonderful and who are natural storytellers. They are at the beauty parlor, they're at the barbershop, church and anywhere we gather. I was very aware of those personalities as I wrote, including the people from the community where I grew up. I had an uncle who would entertain us for hours spinning monologues that had some loose grounding in fact. As I got older and became aware of craft and structure, I thought he could be a novelist, stand-up comedian, historian or any number of things. That's what I tried to convey and I hope readers will recognize some of the characters from their lives.