Azealia Banks doesn't just make music. The rapper is also working on a novel titled Idle Delilah. The books follows the protagonist Delilah Maisley, the daughter of an African American woman who marries a white slave owner in the South (his name is Luther Luciferian Lynch). The story's title is also the name of a track from Banks' album Broke with Expensive Taste, XXL notes.
Check out an excerpt below and head over to Banks' Tumblr to read the entire passage.
Delilah was a curious girl much to the dismay of her mother.
Like other little girls she had a fondness of all things feminine and had a special affinity for her mother's fancy vanity. She spent several hours at the gold-trimmed victorian mirrors applying scented face powders, and red lipstick under the care of her mammy Ms. Maisley. She was the youngest of the Lynch children. Her next sibling, John John, 7 years her senior spent his time playing with the Bush boys leaving Delilah all alone. John John's summers were full of days playing catch, trapping unfamiliar insects, and fishing near Broken Black river. While Delilah spent most of her days sitting on her family's front porch idling away, playing with imaginary friends, her Jacks, and the collection of dolls she amassed from her father's travels; she longed to travel into the fields to make friends with some of the Negro children.
Maisley was one of the Lynch family's eldest and wisest servants, and spent her life raising several generations of Lynch children, including Delilah's father. Much to Maisley's surprise, as repayment for her years of loyalty and care, her own son would lose his life to one of the children she spent her lifetime caring for. When Delilah's father was just becoming a man, barely old enough to herd cattle or control his own horse, he beat and murdered Maisley's son for accidentally tipping and spilling a bail of cotton. It had been 23 years since Maisley gathered her son's body from the bottom of the Artubus tree, or spoke her last word. Nowadays, she sat quietly, responding gently to requests made of her, and watching little Delilah when Mrs. Lynch was away from the plantation, or otherwise occupied.
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