Literature
In her haunting and necessary essay “In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens,” Alice Walker reminds us that reconciliation must happen not only with one another in the present, but also with the stillborn creative energies of our mothers and grandmothers of the past. Many of these enslaved women, she writes, were artists —painters, poets, sculptors, musicians — “driven to a numb and bleeding madness by the springs of creativity in them for which there was no release.” One way to grieve this loss — which is all of humanity’s — is to notice and steward whatever creative freedoms and energies we are fortunate enough to have. Another is to explore, talk about, and share the vast outpouring of creative works by the children and grandchildren of our lost artists. Start with Walker’s essay (in the collection of the same name) and then move on to the other gorgeous offerings found on this page.
- Dr. Claire Miller Colombo, Assistant Professor of Writing, Theology, and the Arts, and Director of the Center for Writing and Creative Expression
Historical & Biographical Works
Black Women of the Harlem Renaissance Era by ISBN: 9780810895027Publication Date: 2017-11-24
Dust Tracks on a Road by Call Number: PS3515.U789 Z465 2006ISBN: 9780060854089Publication Date: 2006-01-03
Print books
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf: A Choreopoem by Call Number: PS3569.H3324 F6 2010ISBN: 9780684843261Publication Date: 1997-09-01
e-books
Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Grace by ISBN: 9780140196306Publication Date: 2002-01-08
Parable of the Brown Girl: The Sacred Lives of Girls of Color by ISBN: 9781506455693Publication Date: 2020-02-04
Pauli Murray
“True Community is based upon equality, mutuality, and reciprocity. It affirms the richness of individual diversity as well as the common human ties that bind us together.”
- Pauli Murray
Dark Testament: And Other Poems by Call Number: PS3563.U775 D37 2018ISBN: 9781631494833Publication Date: 2018-09-04
The Dream Is Freedom: Pauli Murray and American Democratic Faith by ISBN: 9780199744817Publication Date: 2011-04-01
Pauli Murray and Caroline Ware: Forty Years of Letters in Black and White by Call Number: HQ1412 .A87 2006ISBN: 9780807830550Publication Date: 2006-10-30
Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family by Call Number: E185.96 .M96 1999ISBN: 9780807072097Publication Date: 1999-08-01
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison was the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. She explores the black experience in America in near mystical terms that nevertheless carry immense weight. Her emphasis on belonging and the community, created and upheld in large part by women, imparts hope amidst painful pasts and experiences.
Alice Walker
Alice Walker is a novelist, poet, and activist. She coined the term "womanism" to get at the intersectionality of race and gender oppression. Alice believes that all people are to do the work of cultivating compassion in themselves for others.
Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde, by her own assertion, was a lesbian, mother, warrior, and poet. Lorde celebrated her blackness and woman-ness, and railed at continued racial injustice.
Websites
The Coretta Scott King Book Awards
"The 2019 Coretta Scott King Book Awards Author Winner is Claire Hartfield, author of "A Few Red Drops: The Chicago Race Riot of 1919," published by Clarion Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. [This book] is a meticulously researched exposition of the socio-economic landscape and racial tensions that led to the death of a black teen who wanted to swim, and the violent clash that resulted."
Poetry
Best Barbarian: Poems by Call Number: PS3618.E4456 B47 2022ISBN: 9780393609332Publication Date: 2022-03-22
Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry by Call Number: PS591.N4 F87 2020ISBN: 9780810141544Publication Date: 2019-12-16
Literary Criticism
Women and the Word: Contemporary Women Novelists and the Bible by Call Number: PR888 .R5 K56 2000ISBN: 9780312238209Publication Date: 2000-06-01
