Table of Contents:
  • 1900-1950: Harlem renaissance: Natalie (1898) / Alice Dunbar-Nelson
  • Closing door (1919) / Angelina Weld Grimke
  • Blessed assurance (1963) / Langston Hughes
  • from Infants of the spring (1932) / Wallace Thurman
  • Smoke, lilies, and jade (1925) / Richard Bruce Nugent
  • from One way to heaven (1932) / Countee Cullen
  • 1950-1980: protest era: from Boy at the window (1951) / Owen Dodson
  • from Another country (1962) / James Baldwin
  • from Ruby (1976) / Rosa Guy
  • from Zami: a new spelling of my name (1982) / Audre Lorde
  • Aye, and Gomorrah (1967) / Samuel R. Delany
  • from Suzie Q (1978) / Red Jordan Arobateau
  • Symbols (1990) / Julie Blackwomon
  • This is how it happened (2000) / Alice Walker
  • Ecce homo (2000) / Michelle Cliff
  • Women of summer (1977) / Cheryl Clarke
  • 1980-2000: coming out black, like us: In the life (1987) / Becky Birtha
  • Bird of paradise (1992) / Alexis DeVeaux
  • from The Gilda stories (1991) / Jewelle Gomez
  • from Vanishing rooms (1991) / Melvin Dixon
  • Dance of the cranes (1997) / Donna Allegra
  • from A hundred days from now (1994) / Steven Corbin
  • from The color of trees (1992) / Canaan Parker
  • from Coffee will make you black (1994) / April Sinclair
  • from Captain swing (1993) / Larry Duplechan
  • from Invisible life (1991) / E. Lynn Harris
  • from Soul kiss (1997) / Shay Youngblood
  • from The serpent's gift (1994) / Helen Elaine Lee
  • Foundations of the earth (1992) / Randall Kenan
  • from From the notebooks of melanin sun (1995) / Jacqueline Woodson
  • from Sunday you learn how to box (2000) / Bil Wright
  • from Traitor to the race (1995) / Darieck Scott
  • Whose song? (2000) / Thomas Glave
  • from B-Boy blues (1994) / James Earl Hardy
  • from Walking through mirrors (1998) / Brian Keith Jackson
  • from Po man's child (1999) / Marci Blackman.