"The most consistently rewarding of the recent anthologies focusing on Afro-American women's writing . . . " —Modern Fiction Studies" . . . successfully [exposes] the core of Black women's writing and confidently [places] it within the American literary tradition." —Belles LettresBlack women have been writing and publishing fiction for more than a century, yet little is known of their literary history, their influence on each other, or the significance of their work to the American literary tradition. All the contributors implicitly address the question of how this recovered tradition reshapes our understanding of American literature.