• Introduction: Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, and the "Ancient Power" of Black WomenMarjorie Pryse1 Adding Color and Contour to Early American Self-Portraitures: Autobiographical Writings of Afro-American WomenFrances Smith Foster2 Green-eyed Monsters of the Slavocracy: Jealous Mistresses in Two Slave Narratives Minrose C. Gwin3 Pauline Hopkins: Our Literary ForemotherClaudia Tate4 Out of the Woods and into the World: A Study of Interracial Friendships between Women in the American NovelsElizabeth Schultz5 The Neglected Dimension of Jessie Redmon FausetDeborah E. McDowell6 Ann Petry's Demythologizing of American Culture and Afro-American CharacterBernard W. Bell7 "Pattern against the Sky": Deism and Motherhood in Ann Petry's The StreetMarjorie Pryse8 Jubilee: The Black Woman's Celebration of Human CommunityMinrose C. Gwin9 Chosen Place, Timeless People: Some Figurations on the New WorldHortense J. Spillers10 Lady No Longer Sings the Blues: Rape, Madness, and Silence in The Bluest EyeMadonne M. Miner11 Recitation to the Griot: Storytelling and Learning in Toni Marrison's Song of SolomonJoseph T. Skerrett, Jr.12 The Wise Witches: Black Women Mentors in the Fiction of Octavia E. ButlerThelma J. Shinn13 "What It Is I Think She's Doing Anyhow": A Reading of Toni Cade Bambara's The Salt EatersGloria T. Hull14 Trajectories of Self-Definition: Placing Contemporary Afro-American Women's FictionBarbara ChristianAfterword: Cross-Currents, Discontinuities: Black Women's FictionHortnese J. SpillersThe ContributorsIndex

"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 Lettres