Set in the Black small-town South of the early sixties, Shay Youngblood's stories capture the richness of being raised into womanhood by a community of women. As seen through the eyes of a girlchild mothered by her "big mamas," the daily lives of ordinary incredible women are dynamically portrayed. A 1990 Pushcart Selection.

This long-anticipated first collection captures the faces, voices, feelings, words, and stories of the author's African American family, people in the neighborhood of the Northern Black town where she grew up. Kate Rushin uses the image of African Americans who sing back-up vocals for white entertainers as a metaphor for those relegated to the shadows.

Perhaps the preeminent African American lesbian poet writing today, Cheryl Clarke has a heady command of the language, the ability to work in a variety of forms, and an uncompromising Black and queer stance. This is her fourth book, following in the tradition of Narratives, Living As A Lesbian, and Humid Pitch.

An elegant, sensual, and naturalistic fantasy--a Black vampire story. Time-traveling from Southern slavery in 1850 to environmental devastation 200 years later, Gilda is the quintessential outsider seeking community. Winner of two 1992 Lambda Book Awards for Lesbian Fiction and Lesbian Science Fiction.

Cheryl Clarke's third book once again reveals her as a probing storyteller. She unearths the untold or not-told-enough tales of women of color, triumphant lesbians, ambivalent men, slave women, and the children who survive childhood. Always indebted to Black music, Clarke plumbs African-American experience and lesbian living to construct her mythic herstories.

Poet and performer Pat Parker wrote, in this her fifth no-holds-barred no-nonsense book, about being Black, female, and gay. Her poetry "is shot through with life; it's nothing if not genuine. It's clear, strong, visionary, and unmistakably great." (Women's Review of Books) The significance of her work is obvious now more than ever since her untimely death.

Nothing lukewarm here. Cheryl Clarke writes variations on the themes of blackness, anger, violence, loss, loneliness, lesbianism, and sex. Her form is elegant, her language direct, her images strong. The impact is stunning. "Jazz melodies played in counterpoint to uncompromising political judgments." (Village Voice)

by Jewelle Gomez
Taking their inspiration from the author's African American and Native American story telling heritage, these are poems of finding home, making love, learning history. They are, like the narratives passed down from one generation to the next, meant to be reinvented and heard aloud. Oral Tradition is sometimes more than it appears to be.

"Contemporary Black American poetry at its saltiest, wittiest, and most impassioned." (Booklist) Hattie Gossett takes on the madness and sweetness of urban life in this energetic collection. Her "fine eye for detail and her keen ear for the rhythms of speech and of jazz and blues lends this debut collection its considerable potency and authority." (Publishers Weekly)

With an incisive introduction by Cheryl Clarke, celebrations/remembrances/tributes from ten outstanding African American women writers, and a dozen previously unpublished pieces, Movement In Black is a must read/must have on your book shelf.

Whether she was presenting her poetry on street corners, performing with other women--writers, musicians, activists--in bars and auditoriums, rallying the crowd at political events, preaching to the converted, or converting the ill-informed, Pat Parker was a presence.

She wrote about gut issues: the lives of ordinary Black people, violence, loving women, the legacy of her African American heritage, being queer. She was a woman who engaged life fully, both personally and as a political activist, linking the struggles for racial, gender, sexual, and class equality long before it was PC to do so. She died as she lived--fighting forces larger than herself.

The publication of Movement In Black is an opportunity, both for those who were around the first time and those who are new to her work, to experience and enjoy Pat Parker's power.

Well-versed in the traditions of African-American writing, Gomez moves from lesbian life in Boston in the 1960s (the title story) to a futuristic fantasy, "Houston," a previously unpublished Gilda story. The centerpiece novella, "Lynx and Strand," explores some of the darkest dreams and fears of American culture as we hurtle toward the millenium.

The breadth of Jewelle Gomez's literary reach is amply illustrated as she continues to entice and entertain her readers in Don't Explain with her sweetly erotic excursions and encompassing vision.