When ???Beloved??? failed to be nominated for a National Book Award (Pete Dexter???s ???Paris Trout??? won that year), forty-eight prominent black intellectuals and writers, including Maya Angelou, Lucille Clifton, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alice Walker, and Quincy Troupe, protested ???against such oversight and harmful whimsy??? in a statement that was printed in the Times Book Review. ???Alive, we