Henry Louis Gates Jr., author, New Yorker contributor, Harvard professor, PBS star, has come a long way from Piedmont, W.Va., But the small paper-mill town, where “there were 386 black people and one Jewish family’’ among the predominantly Irish and Italian population, is still very much on Gates’s mind for many reasons, one being that’s where he became a bibliophile. Gates talks about his new book, “Life Upon These Shores,’’ Tuesday at 7 p.m. at Harvard Book Store.
BOOKS: Were you bookish growing up?
GATES: Oh yeah, my father worked two jobs so we were well off for Piedmont and particularly for the black people. I didn’t know I was poor until I went to Yale. I had my own room and bookcase. I’d order books from the Book-of the-Month Club. That was very important to me.
