Award-winning American author Tayari Jones has added her voice to the politicians, religious leaders and activists calling for a boycott of Arizona over its tough new anti-immigration law.

            Last week Arizona governor Jan Brewer approved legislation giving police the right to stop and question anyone "if reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the US", prompting calls across the US for a boycott of the state amidst fears the legislation would victimise anyone who looks or sounds Latino.

            Jones, who had been due to speak at a writers' conference in Tucson, Arizona this summer, said yesterday that she was cancelling the engagement in protest over the law. "Yesterday, I spoke with a dear friend who is an American citizen of Mexican descent who said that he would not feel safe in Arizona, although he (like me) used to call the state home," she wrote in a letter to the Pima Summer Writers Conference organisers, which she posted on her website. "That people should be legally required to show proof of citizenship is similar to the antebellum mandate that black people produce 'free papers' proving themselves not to be slaves. It recalls the pass system under South Africa's apartheid. Sadly, visiting Arizona for a conference or a vacation without fear has become an ostentatious display of privilege. As much as I was looking forward to participating in the Pima Writers Conference, travelling to Arizona would be tantamount [to] endorsing these draconian policies."

            The Atlanta, Georgia-born Jones, whose debut novel Leaving Atlanta won a host of awards, is currently assistant professor in creative writing at Rutgers-Newark University. She said her sentiments about the Arizona anti-immigration law were captured in James Baldwin's letter to Angela Davis in 1970, when he wrote: "If they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night."