>> guest: son of nathaniel hawthorne. hawthorne had three children, one son. the son had 10 children, eight of whom lived, so a lot of children, and these descendants through julian, through these eight, are great grandchildren. they are all over the place. c-span: what did you learn from the letters of sophia, his wife? >> guest: well, i learned a great deal about life in the hawthorne household. i learned a tremendous amount about her, because she was -- as a wife, she was hawthorne's best and most faithful publicist, both within the family and outside the family. she was wonderful to him. she was -- she was ebullient and undaunted in her faith in him. i also learned a lot about how they raised their children, what they read, what they ate. it was an enormous amount that i learned through her letters because she was -- she was unreserved. where he was reserved, she was unreserved, and she wrote. i don't know how people had the time to write the kinds of letters that they wrote and do everything else they did in a day. c-span: what's the story of sophia and h

c-span: when did you first get interested in nathaniel hawthorne? >> guest: oh, it's hard to say. probably as a school child. i remember reading "the minister's black veil," which school children had to do, and being completely horrified. and i never forgot it. i was horrified because i didn't understand it. and later i realized it was all right not to understand it. so i think hawthorne grabs people at a certain point in one's life and never lets go. and long after i decided to write a biography of hawthorne, i realized that my previous book, which was on a very different subject, gertrude stein and her brother, leo, actually began with an epigraph from hawthorne, from hawthorne's "scarlet letter." so obviously, i had been

>> guest: that is a wonderful portrait of nathaniel hawthorne that actually hangs in a club in new york city. and it was taken -- it was done of him when he was about 46 years old. (unintelligible). c-span: brenda wineapple, our guest, "hawthorne: the life." thank you very much. >> guest: thank you. .. >> host: tonight we're speaking be at telephone with journalist and right 39 u.s. spent the last 28 years on pennsylvania's death row we're also joined by two distinguished scholars from princeton university dr. cornel west father of many books authored dr. patricia fernandez kelley from princeton university department of sociology. [applause] we would like to give special thanks to city lights books the independent press who published mumia abu-jamal new book "jailhouse lawyers" and in particular the editor we have to get through prison walls and rules in order to speak with mumia abu-jamal and they do to everyone for your vision not only what is but what might be possible. we welcome all of you. just a little word of logistics we will open with cornel west and patricia fernandez kelley