Render Me My Song: African-American Women Writers Form Slavery Ot the Present

In the past 20 years, black women writers have finally gained the recognition they deserve with African Americans such as Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walkernow bestsellers all over the world. But they did not come from nowhere. Since slaves were first taken from Africa to America in 1619, black women have been telling tales, singing songs, and speaking out. For the first time the full scope of their creativity is represented here, in, among others, the 18th-century enslaved poet Phillis Wheatley, the so-called Genius of the South” Zora Neale Hurston, the political activist Angela Davis, the gifted generation of Audre Lorde and Gloria Naylor, and the contemporary voices of Ntozake Shange, Jamaica Kincaid, Toi Derricotte, and Ai. This is an essential text for newcomers and experts alike, combining a broad survey of African American women’s writing with detail and insights by an author herself deeply involved in the tradition.