Lewis Perdue is a graduate of Cornell University where he studied biophysics.
"It is fact that the U.S. and other governments have conducted research into weapons that can target specific genes; it is also fact that our chromosomes most probably carry ancient genetic sequences which have mutated into harmlessness, but which could be fatal if re-activated."
Perdue is also a fifth generation Mississippian, the scion of a Delta cotton plantation family. Expelled from Ole Miss in the 1960s for leading a civil rights march, Perdue, ironically, is the great-grandson of J.Z. George, a former U.S. Senator, former chief justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court and the creator of Jim Crow segregation (As the author of the Mississippi constitution, George embodied in it, for the first, a literacy test and the poll tax.) J.Z. George is one of Mississippi's two statues in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Congress; the other is Jefferson Davis, head of the Confederacy.
Haunted and disgusted by his legacy of racism, Perdue rejected his family, heritage and culture and left Mississippi to find work as a common laborer in Rust Belt factories of New York state--the belly of a Yankee beast he had been taught to despise. Pulling CRTs from a gas furnace hot enough to melt the glass gave Perdue time to reflect on his past ("I was sick of having dead men run my life") and his future ("If my great, great grandfather could divide men and women by ethnicity, perhaps I could contribute to bringing them together again.")
"The pseudoscience of racism and eugenics was dedicated to showing how one group was biologically inferior to another," Perdue said. "I wanted to see for myself." As he studied molecular genetics,he learned there is a greater genetic variation between two groups of white people--say one in Yazoo City and another in Tupelo--than exists between those whites and the blacks who live across the same town. The science in this, Perdue says, is clear but remained buried in obscure scientific papers and books not read by the general public.
"Scholarly tracts are not widely read," "Perdue said, "and small novels for intellectuals rarely impact those beyond the drawing room." While despised by intellectuals and professors of literature, I realize that popular novels have far greater, quicker, lasting impact on a culture because they are read by millions rather than a few hundred. I decided to make this my effort." Slatewiper is that effort.
Perdue also has a more conventional biography.
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