edited by Mary Helen Washington (1989)
The New York Times Book Review once noted that Mary Helen Washington "has had a greater impact upon the formation of the canon of Afro-American literature than has any other scholar."

This short-story collection, which explores what it means to be Black and a woman in America, features a wide range of Black female writers including but not limited to Gwendolyn Brooks, Gayl Jones, Toni Cade Bambara, and Alice Walker.