Book excerpt: "Ralph Wiley continues to do what few other writers are doing today. His insights, humor, brashness and intelligence are a welcome read." Spike Lee Ralph Wiley is a troublemaker. His controversial debut as a critic of popular American culture, WHY BLACK PEOPLE TEND TO SHOUT, received wide acclaim. With WHAT BLACK PEOPLE SHOULD DO NOW, Ralph Wiley dons the mantle of Frederick Douglass, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin, in a voice that fuses oral history with the Mississippi Delta traditions of Mark Twain and Peter Taylor. In twenty-two explosive essays, he takes an unblinking and ironic look at African-American life, and fulfills the role of artist as agitator. For Wiley, good intentions are not enough. He writes to stimulate the synapses in the brain, and he delivers food for thought that leaves the mouth burning.