Novelist, college profesor, woodworker, and fly fisherman, Thelonious (Monk) Ellison has never allowed race to define his identity. But he is offended and angered by the success of We's Lives in Da Ghetto, the exploitive debut novel of a young, middle-class black woman who once visited "some relatives in Harlem for a couple of days." The book's success rankles all the more as Monk's own most recent novel has just notched its seventh rejection.