Anthologies of African American Writing

Black-Eyed Susans [and] Midnight Birds: Stories by and about Black Women

"Black-Eyed Susans [and] Midnight Birds: Stories by and about Black Women" . Ed. Mary Helen Washington. New York: Anchor, 1990. xii+398 pp.

Re(Visions): Black Women Writers-Their Texts, Their Readers, Their Critics
● Jean Wheeler Smith / Frankie Mae
● Paulette Childress White / Alice
● Paulette Childress White / The Bird Cage
● Toni Morrison / Seemothermotherisverynice
● Paule Marshall / Reena
● Gwendolyn Brooks / If You're Light and Have Long Hair
● Gwendolyn Brooks / At the Burns-Coopers
● Gayl Jones / Asylum
● Gayl Jones / Jevata
● Louise Meriwether / Happening in Barbados
● Alexis DeVeaux / The Riddles of Egypt Brownstone
● Alexis DeVeaux / Remember Him a Outlaw
● Frenchy Hodges / Requiem for Willie Lee
● Sherley Anne Williams / Meditations on History
● Alice Walker / A Sudden Trip Home in the Spring
● Alice Walker / Everyday Use
● Alice Walker / Advancing Luna and Ida B. Wells
● Ntozake Shange / comin to terms
● Ntozake Shange / aw, babee, you so pretty
● Toni Cade Bambara / Medley
● Toni Cade Bambara / Witchbird

A combined re-issue of Washington's two earlier collections of short stories by African American women writers, "Black-Eyed Susans" (1975) and "Midnight Birds" (1980). The re-issue includes a revised introduction (Kinnamon 1997: 473).

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Farah J. Griffin, commenting on "personal criticism" in African American studies, remarks: "I think that black feminist critics were very much influenced by the creative writer. Even if you look at the introductory essays in Mary Helen Washington's profoundly influential anthologies, you will see that she started important criticism and history in a voice more akin to that of the black woman as creative writer than that of most academic critics. . . . I'm not saying that the sophistication or rigor is not there—it's all there—but there is also a lyrical voice that I find so compelling" (Rowell, Charles H. "An Interview with Farah Jasmine Griffin." "Callaloo" 22.4 (1999): 872-92, at 878-79. JSTOR).

Kinnamon 1997: 473, gives date of publication as "1989"]

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