Steve’s Take: an Interview with Stephen King

Stephen King's evolution on race: Re‐reading Duma Key

“…Perhaps Edgar has been “passing” as white—either wittingly or not. According to King, Mother Abagail was developed, in part, as Black because he wanted someone who could both remember slavery and bear witness to its atrocities directly (Magistrale, 2003, 13). If Edgar is connected in some meaningful way to Mother Abagail, is he also someone who must bear witness to the ongoing tradition of racism in America?…”

“…He can come across as either uninterested or defensive when the subject comes up. For example, in a 2003 interview with Tony Magistrale, King responded to charges about how he characterized John Coffey in The Green Mile as only using his supernatural powers to save a white hero as a poor understanding of his work by critics, an “imaginative failing rather than something helpful” (Magistrale, 2003, pp. 14–15).…”