Render Me My Song African-American Women Writers from Slavery to the Present

In the past twenty years, black women writers have finally gained the recognition they deserve with African Americans such as Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison and Alice Walker now bestsellers all over the world. But they did not come from nowhere. Since slaves were first taken from Africa to America in 1619, through singing songs and story telling, black women have been evaluating in language the world in which they had to live. For the first time the full scope of their creativity is represented here - the eighteenth-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. For those already acquainted with the traditions of African-American literature, this book is an essential text, offering insights and vital information. For the uninitiated, it is a must.