Black women writers such as Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Jamaica Kincaid, and Gloria Naylor rose to the forefront of American literature in the 1970s, the first time Black women gained mainstream attention and prominence for their writing. Now SHAKING THE TREE: New Fiction and Memoir by Black Women [W.W. Norton; August 2, 2004; $14.95 paper] highlights the next generation of contemporary Black women writers, writers whose voices are defining a new era of American literature following up the legacy established. From an upper-crust prep school to a Haitian refugee raft, from the newsroom of the New York Times to the inside of a prison, SHAKING THE TREE offers myriad answers to the question of what it means to be a Black woman today.

Weaned on the works of these legendary literary writers who came before them, this new wave of black woman writers are also, as Men Danquah writes in the introduction, "the children of Black power; Fat Albert and the Cosby; Kids; Roots, the Huxtables; the Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton years." The twenty-three voices gathered here came of age in the wake of the civil rights black arts gay rights, and feminist movements. Their literature embodies the tragedies and the triumphs of contemporary black women in their struggle to negotiate a sense of individual identity beyond the limited scope of gender and race. They are bi-racial and multicultural and they fill their pens with the indelible ink of identity and sex. They are their mothers' daughters, and nothing at all like them. Today's black women authors write in voices their literary forebears had to keep to a whisper.

SHAKING THE TREE offers a panorama of both fiction and memoir, revealing perspectives as diverse as they are dynamic: asha bandele recounts how she fell in love with a prisoner charged with murder; Rebecca Walker explores a childhood split between disparate racial and cultural landscapes; ZZ Packer remembers her near-abduction from summer camp at a time when local black children were being found murdered; Lorene Cary remembers the isolation she felt as a young Black teenager at a mostly-white, northeastern prep school; Danzy Senna and Carolyn Ferrell tell tales about being young and biracial in a society that sees only in black and white.

SHAKING THE TREE is a vibrant and moving book, one that holds promise, courage, ambivalence and despair in equal measure. This anthology is as urgent as it is historical--these voices are the future of American literature.

About the Author:
Meri Nana-Ama Danquah is the author of a memoir, Willow Weep for Me: A Black Woman's Journey Through Depression, and the editor of the anthology Becoming American: Personal Essays by First Generation Immigrant Women. She lives in Los Angeles.

ISBN: 0-393-32580-6
Price: $14.95
Pages: 320