The Norton anthology of African American literature

Preface to the second edition

Introduction: Talking books

The vernacular tradition. Spirituals ; Gospel ; Secular rhymes and songs, ballads, work songs and songs of social change ; The blues ; Jazz ; Rhythm and blues ; Hip hop ; Sermons and prayers ; Folktales

The literature of slavery and freedom 1746-1865. Jupiter Hammon (1711-1790/1806) ; Venture Smith (1729?-1805) ; Lucy Terry (c.1724-1821) ; Olaudah Equiano (c.1745-1797) ; Phillis Wheatley (1753?-1784) ; David Walker (1785-1830) ; George Moses Horton (b. 1797?) ; Sojourner Truth (1797-1883) ; Maria W. Stewart (1803-1879) ; Martin R. Delany (1812-1885) ; Harriet Jacobs (c.1813-1897) ; William Wells Brown (1814?-1884) ; Henry Highland Garnet (1815-1882) ; Victor Séjour (1817-1874) ; Elizabeth Keckley (c.1818-1907) ; Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) ; James M. Whitfield (1822-1871) ; Frances E.W. Harper (1825-1911) ; Harriet E. Wilson (1825-1900)

Literature of the Reconstruction to the new Negro Renaissance, 1865-1919. Charlotte Forten Grimké (1837-1914) ; Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) ; Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932) ; Anna Julia Cooper (1858?-1964) ; Pauline E. Hopkins (1859-1930) ; Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931) ; W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963) ; James D. Corrothers (1869-1917) ; James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) ; Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) ; Sutton E. Griggs (1872-1933) ; Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson (1875-1935) ; William Stanley Braithwaite (1878-1962) ; Fenton Johnson (1888-1958)

Harlem Renaissance, 1919-1940. Arthur A. Schomburg (1874-1938) ; Angelina Weld Grimké (1880-1958) ; Anne Spencer (1882-1975) ; Jessie Redmon Fauset (c.1884-1961) ; Alain Locke (1886-1954) ; Georgia Douglas Johnson (1886-1966) ; Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) ; Claude McKay (1889-1948) ; Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) ; Nella Larsen (1893-1964) ; Jean Toomer (1894-1967) ; George Samuel Schuyler (1895-1977) ; Rudolph Fisher (1897-1934) ; Marita Bonner (1899-1971) ; Sterling A. Brown (1901-1989) ; Gwendolyn B. Bennett (1902-1981) ; Wallace Thurman (1902-1934) ; Arna Bontemps (1902-1973) ; Langston Hughes (1902-1967) ; Countee Cullen (1903-1946) ; Helene Johnson (1907-1995).

Realism, naturalism, modernism, 1940-1960. Melvin B. Tolson (1900?-1966) ; Dorothy West (1907-1998) ; Richard Wright (1908-1960) ; Chester B. Himes (1909-1984) ; Ann Petry (1911-1997) ; Robert Hayden (1913-1982) ; Ralph Ellison (1914-1994) ; Margaret Walker (1915-1998) ; Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000) ; James Baldwin (1924-1987) ; Bob Kaufman (1925-1986) ; Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965)

The Blacks arts era, 1960-1975. Mari Evans ; Hoyt Fuller (1923-1981) ; Malcolm X (El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz) (1925-1965) ; John Alfred Williams (b. 1925) ; Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968) ; Etheridge Knight (1931-1985) ; Addison Gayle Jr. (1932-1991) ; Audre Lorde (1934-1992) ; Amiri Baraka (b. 1934) ; Sonia Sanchez (b. 1934) ; Ed Bullins (b. 1935) ; Eldridge Cleaver (1935-1998) ; A.B. Spellman (b. 1935) ; June Jordan (1936-2002) ; Lucille Clifton (b. 1936) ; Jayne Cortez (b. 1936) ; Larry Neal (1937-1981) ; Ishmael Reed (b. 1938) ; Michael S. Harper (b. 1938) ; Toni Cade Bambara (1939-1995) ; Maulana Karenga (b. 1941) ; Haki R. Madhubuti (b. 1942) ; Nikki Giovanni (b. 1943) ; James Alan McPherson (b. 1943) ; Quincy Troupe (b. 1943) ; Carolyn M. Rodgers (b. 1945)

Literature since 1975. Albert Murray (b. 1916) ; Maya Angelou (b. 1928) ; Paule Marshall (b. 1929) ; Adrienne Kennedy (b. 1931) ; Toni Morrison (b. 1931) ; Ernest J. Gaines (b. 1933) ; Clarence Major (b. 1936) ; Leon Forrest (1937-1997) ; John Edgar Wideman (b. 1941) ; Samuel R. Delany (b. 1942) ; Shirley Anne Williams (1944-1999) ; Alice Walker (b. 1944) ; August Wilson (b. 1945) ; Michelle Cliff (b. 1946) ; Octavia Butler (b. 1947) ; Yusef Komunyakaa (b. 1947) ; Nathaniel Mackey (b. 1947) ; Charles Johnson (b. 1948) ; Ntozake Shange (b. 1948) ; Gayl Jones (b. 1949) ; Jamaica Kincaid (b. 1949) ; David Bradley (b. 1950) ; Gloria Naylor (b. 1950) ; Rita Dove (b. 1952) ; Walter Mosley (b. 1952) ; Harryette Mullen (b. 1953) ; Essex Hemphill (1957-1995) ; Caryl Phillips (b. 1958) ; Edwidge Danticat (b. 1969) ; Colson Whitehead (b. 1969)

Timeline: African American literature in context

Audio companion notes / by Robert G. O'Meally.

The vernacular tradition. Spirituals. Were you there when they crucified my Lord? ; City called heaven ; God's a-gonna trouble the water ; Walk together children ; I know moon-rise ; I'm a-rollin' ; I been rebuked and I been scorned ; Didn't my Lord deliver Daniel? ; Soon I will be done ; No more auction block ; Swing low, sweet chariot ; Steal away to Jesus ; Go down, Moses ; Been in the storm so long ; Oh, freedom!

Gospel. This little light of mine ; Down by the riverside ; Freedom in the air ; Take my hand, precious Lord ; Peace be still ; Stand by me

The blues. Yellow dog blues ; St. Louis blues ; Beale Street blues ; Down-hearted blues ; See, see rider ; Prove it on me blues ; Gulf Coast blues ; Trouble in mind ; Backwater blues ; In the house blues ; How long blues ; Hellhound on my trail ; It's a low down dirty shame ; Good morning, blues ; Sent for you yesterday ; Going to Chicago blues ; Fine and mellow ; Hoochie coochie ; Sunnyland.

The vernacular tradition. Secular rhymes and songs, ballads, and work songs. Secular rhymes and songs. We raise de wheat ; Me and my captain ; Promises of freedom ; Jack and Dinah want freedom ; Run, nigger, run ; Learn to count ; Another man done gone ; You may go but this will bring you back

Ballads. Poor Lazarus ; The signifying monkey ; Wild Negro Bill ; John Henry ; Frankie and Johnny ; Railroad Bill ; Stackolee ; Sinking of the Titanic ; Shine and the Titanic

Work songs. Pick a bale of cotton ; Go down, old Hannah ; Can't you line it?

The vernacular tradition. Jazz. (What did I do to be so) black and blue / Andy Razaf

It don't mean a thing (if it ain't got that swing) / Duke Ellington

Parker's mood / King Pleasure.

The vernacular tradition. Rap. The revolution will not be televised / Gil Scott-Heron

The message / Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five

Don't believe the hype / Public Enemy

The evil that men do / Queen Latifah.

The vernacular tradition. Sermons. God

The Eagle stirreth her nest / C.L. Franklin

Faith hasn't got no eyes / Zora Neale Hurston

I have a dream ; I've been to the mountaintop / Martin Luther King

The ballot or the bullet / Malcolm X.

The vernacular tradition. Folktales. All God's chillen had wings ; Big talk ; Deer hunting story ; How to write a letter ; "'Member youse a nigger" ; "Ah'll beatcher makin' money" ; Why the sister in black works hardest ; Why women always take advantage of men ; "De reason niggers is working so hard" ; The ventriloquist ; You talk too much, anyhow ; The king buzzard ; A flying fool ; Bur Rabbit in Red Hill churchyard ; Brer Rabbit tricks Brer Fox again ; The wonderful tar-baby story ; How Mr. Rabbit was too sharp for Mr. Fox ; The awful fate of Mr. Wolf ; What the rabbit learned.

The literature of slavery and freedom : 1746-1865. Bars fight / Lucy Terry

The interesting narrative of the life of Olaudah Equiano, or, Gustavus Vassa, the African, written by himself. Volume 1. Chapter I ; Chapter II ; from Chapter III ; from Chapter IV / Olaudah Equiano

Poems on various subjects, religious and moral. Preface ; Letter sent by the author's master to the publisher ; To the publick / Phillis Wheatley

To Mæcenas ; To the University of Cambridge, in New-England ; On being brought from Africa to America ; On the death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield, 1770 ; To the Right Honourable William, Earl of Dartmouth ; On imagination ; To S.M., a young African painter, on seeing his works ; To Samson Occom ; To his excellency General Washington / Phillis Wheatley

David Walker's appeal in four articles; together with a preamble, to the coloured citizens of the world. Preamble ; Article I : our wretchedness in consequence of slavery / David Walker

The lover's farewell ; On hearing of the intention of a gentleman to purchase the poet's freedom ; Division of an estate ; The creditor to his proud debtor ; George Moses Horton, myself / George Moses Horton.

The literature of slavery and freedom : 1746-1865. Ar'n't I a woman? speech to the Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, 1851 ; from The Anti-slavery bugle, June 21, 1851 ; from The narrative of Sojourner Truth, 1878 / Sojourner Truth

Religion and the pure principles of morality, the sure foundation on which we must build. Introduction / Maria W. Stewart

Lecture delivered at the Franklin Hall / Maria W. Stewart

Incidents in the life of a slave girl. Preface ; Childhood ; The new master and mistress ; The trials of girlhood ; A perilous passage in the slave girl's life ; Another link to life ; The flight ; The loophole of retreat ; Preparations for escape ; The confession ; The Fugitive Slave Law ; Free at last / Harriet Jacobs

Narrative of William W. Brown, a fugitive slave. Chapter V ; from Chapter VI / William Wells Brown

Clotel, or, The president's daughter. The Negro sale ; Going to the South ; The quadroon's home ; To-day a mistress, tomorrow a slave ; Escape of Clotel / William Wells Brown

Lines suggested on reading "An appeal to Christian women of the South," by A.E. Grimke / Ada (Sarah L. Forten)

An address to the slaves of the United States of America / Henry Highland Garnet

The mulatto / Victor Séjour

Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave, written by himself / Frederick Douglass

My bondage and my freedom. Introduced to the abolitionists ; Twenty-one months in Great Brittain / Frederick Douglass.

The literature of slavery and freedom : 1746-1865. from What to the slave is the Fourth of July? : an address delivered in Rochester, New York, on 5 July 1852 / Frederick Douglass

Life and times of Frederick Douglass. Second part. from Chapter XV : Weighed in the balance / Frederick Douglass

Life and times of Frederick Douglass. Third part. Later life / Frederick Douglass

America ; Yes! strike again that sounding string ; Self-reliance / James M. Whitfield

Ethiopia ; Eliza Harris ; The slave mother ; Vashti ; Bury me in a free land ; Aunt Chloe's politics ; Learning to read ; A double standard ; Songs for the people ; An appeal to my country women ; The two offers ; Our greatest want / Frances E.W. Harper

Fancy etchings. Enthusiasm and lofty aspirations ; Dangerous economies / Frances E.W. Harper

Woman's political future / Frances E.W. Harper

Our nig, or, sketches from the life of a free black, in a two-story white house, north. Preface ; Mag Smith, my mother ; My father's death ; A new home for me ; from Chapter VIII : Visitor and departure ; Perplexities, another death ; The winding up of the matter / Harriet E. Wilson.

Literature of the Reconstruction to the new Negro Renaissance : 1865-1919. A parting hymn / Charlotte Forten Grimké

Journals. from Journal one ; from Journal three / Charlotte Forten Grimké

Up from slavery. A slave among slaves ; Boyhood days ; The struggle for an education ; The Atlanta Exposition address / Booker T. Washington

The goopherd grapevine ; The passing of Grandison ; The wife of his youth / Charles W. Chesnutt

Womanhood a vital element in the regeneration and progress of a race / Anna Julia Cooper

Contending forces. The sewing-circle ; Will Smith's defense of his race / Pauline E. Hopkins

Famous men of the Negro race. Booker T. Washington / Pauline E. Hopkins

Famous women of the Negro race. Literary workers : Frances E.W. Harper / Pauline E. Hopkins

Letter from Cordelia A. Condict and Pauline Hopkins's reply : March 1903 / Pauline E. Hopkins

A red record. The case stated ; The remedy / Ida B. Wells-Barnett

A litany of Atlanta ; The song of the smoke ; The souls of black folk ; The damnation of women ; Criteria of Negro art ; Two novels / W.E.B. Du Bois.

Literature of the Reconstruction to the new Negro Renaissance : 1865-1919. The snapping of the bow ; Me 'n' Dunbar ; Paul Laurence Dunbar ; At the closed gate of justice ; An indignation dinner / James D. Corrothers

Sence you went away ; Lift ev'ry voice and sing ; O black and unknown bards ; Fifty years ; Brothers ; The creation ; My city ; The autobiography of an ex-colored man / James Weldon Johnson

The book of American Negro poetry. Preface / James Weldon Johnson

Ode to Ethiopia ; Worn out ; A Negro love song ; The colored soldiers ; An ante-bellum sermon ; Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes ; Not they who soar ; When Malindy sings ; We wear the mask ; Little brown baby ; Her thought and his ; A cabin tale ; Sympathy ; Dinah kneading dough ; The haunted oak ; Douglass ; Philosophy ; Black Samson of Brandywine ; The poet ; The Fourth of July and race outrages / Paul Laurence Dunbar

The hindered hand, or, The reign of the repressionist. The fugitives flee again ; The blaze / Sutton E. Griggs

Violets ; I sit and sew ; April is on the way ; Violets / Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson

The watchers ; The house of falling leaves ; Sic vita ; Turn me to my yellow leaves ; Quiet has a hidden sound / William Stanley Braithwaite

Singing hallelujia ; Song of the whirlwind ; My God in heaven said to me ; The lonely mother ; Tired ; The scarlet woman / Fenton Johnson.

Harlem Renaissance : 1919-1940. The Negro digs up his past / Arthur A. Schomburg

A winter twilight ; The black finger ; For the candle light ; When the green lies over the earth ; Tenebris / Angelina Weld Grimké

Before the feast of Shushan ; Dunbar ; At the carnival ; Lady, lady ; Letter to my sister ; The wife-woman / Anne Spencer

Plum bun : a novel without a moral. from Home. Black Philadelphia ; Sundays / Jessie Redmon Fauset

The new Negro / Alain Locke

The heart of a woman ; Youth ; My little dreams ; Lost illusions ; I want to die while you love me / Georgia Douglas Johnson

Africa for the Africans ; The future as I see it / Marcus Garvey

Harlem shadows ; If we must die ; To the white fiends ; Africa ; America ; My mother ; Enslaved ; The White House ; Outcast ; St. Isaac's Church, Petrograd / Claude McKay

Home to Harlem. He also loved / Claude McKay

Harlem runs wild / Claude McKay

Sweat ; How it feels to be colored me ; The gilded six-bits ; Characteristics of Negro expression / Zora Neale Hurston

Mules and men. Negro folklore / Zora Neale Hurston

Their eyes were watching God. The return ; Pear tree / Zora Neale Hurston

Dust tracks on a road. Research / Zora Neale Hurston

Quicksand. To Denmark ; New life ; Talk of marriage ; Proposal ; Good-bye / Nella Larsen

Cane / Jean Toomer

The Negro-art hokum / George Samuel Schuyler

The city of refuge ; The Caucasian storms Harlem / Rudolph Fisher.

Harlem Renaissance : 1919-1940. The wharf rats / Eric Walrond

On being young, a woman, and colored / Marita Bonner

Odyssey of Big Boy ; Long gone ; Southern road ; Strong men ; Memphis blues ; Slim Greer ; Tin roof blues ; Ma Rainey ; Cabaret ; Sporting Beasley ; Sam Smiley / Sterling A. Brown

Heritage ; To a dark girl ; Sonnet, 2 ; Hatred / Gwendolyn B. Bennett

Infants of the spring. Harlem salon / Wallace Thurman

Golgotha is a mountain ; A black man talks of reaping ; Nocturne at Bethesda ; Southern mansion ; Miracles ; A summer tragedy / Arna Bontemps

The Negro speaks of rivers ; Mother to son ; Danse africaine ; Jazzonia ; When Sue wears red ; Dream variations ; The weary blues ; I too ; A house in Taos ; Homesick blues ; Po' boy blues ; Gypsy man ; Lament over love ; Red silk stockings ; Bad man ; Song for a dark girl ; Gal's cry for a dying lover ; Hard daddy ; Sylvester's dying bed ; Ballad of the landlord ; Juke box love song ; Dream boogie ; Harlem ; Motto ; The Negro artist and the racial mountain ; The blues I'm playing / Langston Hughes

The big sea. When the Negro was in vogue ; Harlem literati ; Downtown / Langston Hughes

The best of Simple. Feet live their own life ; A toast to Harlem ; Jealousy / Langston Hughes

Yet do I marvel ; Tableau ; Incident ; Saturday's child ; The shroud of color ; Heritage ; To John Keats, poet at spring time ; From the dark tower / Countee Cullen

Poem ; Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem ; Remember not ; Invocation / Helene Johnson.

Realism, Naturalism, Modernism : 1940-1960. An ex-judge at the bar ; Dark symphony ; A legend of Versailles ; Libretto for the Republic of Liberia ; The birth of John Henry ; Satchmo / Melvin B. Tolson

The living is easy. Cleo ; Cleo's high jinks ; Cleo goes north / Dorothy West

Blueprint for Negro writing ; The ethics of living Jim Crow, an autobiographical sketch ; Long black song ; The man who lived underground / Richard Wright

Black boy. Booklist ; Chicago / Richard Wright

Salute to the passing / Chester B. Himes

Like a winding sheet / Ann Petry

The street. The apartment / Ann Petry

The diver ; Homage to the empress of the blues ; Middle passage ; O Daedalus, fly away home ; Runagate runagate ; Frederick Douglass ; A ballad of remembrance ; Mourning poem for the Queen of Sunday ; Soledad ; El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz ; A letter from Phillis Wheatley / Robert Hayden

Invisible man. Prologue ; Battle royal ; Epilogue / Ralph Ellison

Change the joke and slip the yoke ; The world and the jug / Ralph Ellison.

Realism, Naturalism, Modernism : 1940-1960. For my people ; Poppa chicken ; For Malcolm X ; Prophets for a new day / Margaret Walker

Kitchenette building ; The mother ; A song in the front yard ; Sadie and Maud ; The vacant lot ; The preacher : ruminates behind the sermon ; The Sundays of Satin-Legs Smith ; Maxie Allen ; The rites for Cousin Vit ; The children of the poor ; The lovers of the poor ; We real cool ; The Chicago Defender sends a man to Little Rock ; A lovely love ; Malcolm X ; Two dedications ; Riot ; The third sermon on the Warpland ; Young heroes ; When you have forgotten Sunday : the love story ; Maud Martha / Gwendolyn Brooks

Everybody's protest novel ; Many thousands gone ; Stranger in the village ; Notes of a native son ; Sonny's blues / James Baldwin

Walking Parker home ; Grandfather was queer, too ; Jail poems ; Unanimity has been achieved, not a dot less for its accidentalness ; War memoir : jazz, don't listen to it at your own risk / Bob Kaufman

A raisin in the sun / Lorraine Hansberry.

The black arts movement : 1960-1970. Status symbol ; I am a black woman / Mari Evans

Towards a black aesthetic / Hoyt Fuller

The autobiography of Malcolm X. Saved / Malcolm X (El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz)

The man who cried I am. In an outdoor cafe ; Memories, Margrit, and morphine ; Picture of the writer / John Alfred Williams

Letter from Birmingham jail / Martin Luther King Jr.

The idea of ancestry ; Hard rock returns to prison from the hospital for the criminal insane ; For black poets who think of suicide / Etheridge Knight

The black aesthetic. Introduction / Addison Gayle Jr.

Preface to a twenty volume suicide note ; In memory of radio ; A poem for black hearts ; I don't love you ; Three movements and a coda ; SOS ; Black art ; The invention of comics ; Dutchman ; The revolutionary theatre / Amiri Baraka.

The black arts movement : 1960-1970. Homecoming ; Poem at thirty ; For our lady ; Summer words of a sistuh addict / Sonia Sanchez

A blues book for blue black magical women. Part three. Present / Sonia Sanchez

Goin' a buffalo : a tragifantasy / Ed Bullins

Soul on ice. The primeval mitosis / Eldridge Cleaver

Did John's music kill him? / A.B. Spellman

How long has Trane been gone / Jayne Cortez

The black arts movement / Larry Neal

Black art : mute matter given force and function / Maulana Karenga

Back again, home ; Introduction : to Think black ; The long reality ; Malcolm spoke/who listened? ; A poem to complement other poems / Haki R. Madhubuti

For Saundra ; Beautiful black men ; Nikki-Rosa / Nikki Giovanni

A solo song : for Doc / James Alan McPherson

In Texas grass ; Conversation overheard ; Impressions/of Chicago, for Howlin' Wolf / Quincy Troupe

Jesus was crucified ; It is deep ; For sistuhs wearin' straight hair / Carolyn M. Rodgers.

Literature since 1970. Train whistle guitar. History lessons / Albert Murray

Still I rise ; My Arkansas / Maya Angelou

I know why the caged bird sings. Mrs. Flowers ; "Mam" / Maya Angelou

Reena ; To Da-duh, in memoriam ; The making of a writier : from the poets in the kitchen / Paule Marshall

A movie star has to star in black and white / Adrienne Kennedy

Sula / Toni Morrison

The sky is gray / Ernest J. Gaines

Father Son and Holy Ghost ; The winds of Orisha ; Coal ; Now that I am forever with child ; A litany for survival ; The evening news ; Poetry is not a luxury / Audre Lorde

Pike Street bus ; The Griots who know Brer Fox ; Tapestries ; Caledonia / Colleen McElroy

The bodies broken on ; The lost baby poem ; Prayer ; Malcolm ; Kali ; If mama/could see ; Homage to my hips ; What spells raccoon to me ; 1. At Jonestown ; A woman who loves ; Wishes for sons ; Move / Lucille Clifton

In memoriam : Martin Luther King Jr. ; I must become a menace to my enemies ; Poem about my rights ; Poem for Guatemala ; The female and the silence of a man ; Intifada ; A new politics of sexuality / June Jordan

Swallow the lake ; Round midnight ; On watching a caterpillar become a butterfly ; Chicago heat / Clarence Major.

Literature since 1970. There is a tree more ancient than Eden. The epistle of Sweetie Reed / Leon Forrest

Dear John, dear Coltrane ; Deathwatch ; Here where Coltrane is ; Br'er Sterling and the rocker ; Grandfather ; "Goin' to the territory" ; In Hayden's collage ; The ghost of soul-making / Michael S. Harper

I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra ; Railroad Bill, a conjure man ; Dualism : in Ralph Elliison's Invisible man ; Chattanooga ; Oakland blues ; Neo-HooDoo manifesto / Ishmael Reed

Mumbo jumbo. Chapters 1-2 / Ishmael Reed

Raymond's run / Toni Cade Bambara

A dance for Ma Rainey ; Conjugal visits / Al Young

The seduction of light. Ben Franklin ; Secondhand business / Al Young

Brothers and keepers. Robby's version / John Edgar Wideman

Damballah / John Edgar Wideman

Atlantis : model 1924 (d) / Samuel R. Delany

The peacock poems : 1 ; I want Aretha to set this to music ; Tell Martha not to moan / Sherley Anne Williams

Women ; Outcast ; On stripping bark from myself ; "Good night, Willie Lee, I'll see you in the morning" ; In search of our mothers' gardens ; Everyday use ; Advancing Luna, and Ida B. Wells / Alice Walker

The color purple. God love all them feelings / Alice Walker

Fences / August Wilson

Within the veil ; Columba / Michelle Cliff.

Literature since 1970. Emmett Till ; Today I am a homicide in the north of the city ; Be quiet, go away ; At the record hop ; American sonnet (10) ; Bedtime story ; Mastectomy / Wanda Coleman

Bloodchild / Octavia Butler

February in Sydney ; Facing it ; Sunday afternoons ; Banking potatoes ; Birds on a powerline / Yusef Komunyakaa

Falso brilhante ; Song of the Andoumboulou : 8 / Nathaniel Mackey

Djbot Baghostu's run. 26. IX. 81 / Nathaniel Mackey

The education of Mingo / Charles Johnson

from For colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf ; Nappy edges ; Bocas : a daughter's geography / Ntozake Shange

Annie John. The circling hand / Jamaica Kincaid

The Chaneysville incident. Old Jack / David Bradley

The women of Brewster Place. The two / Gloria Naylor

Quilting on the rebound / Terry McMillan

David Walker (1785-1830) ; Parsley ; Receiving the stigmata ; from Thomas and Beulah ; The event ; Motherhood ; Daystar ; The Oriental ballerina ; Pastoral ; from Mother love ; Persephone abducted ; Statistic : the witness ; Mother love ; Demeter mourning ; History ; Demeter's prayer to Hades / Rita Dove

Devil in a blue dress. DeWitt Albright ; Joppy ; Daphne Monet / Walter Mosley

Conditions. XXI ; XXII ; XXIV / Essex Hemphill.