Sisterfire: Black Womanist Fiction and Poetry

Title

This edition

"Sisterfire: Black Womanist Fiction and Poetry" . Ed. Charlotte Watson Sherman. New York: HarperPerennial, 1994. xxii+378 pp.

Other editions, reprints, and translations

London: Women's Press, 1995. (with Foreword to the British Edition, by Jean Buffong) (xiii-xv)

Online access

Internet Archive (Women's Press, 1995 edition)

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Charlotte Watson Sherman / Introduction
• karsonya e. wise / chant to the ancestors (for ida and zora)

Part One: Becoming Fluent: Mothers, Daughters, and Other Family
• Rita Dove / After Reading "Mickey in the Night Kitchen" for the Third Time Before Bed
• Lillien Waller / Becoming Fluent
• Marilyn Fullen-Collins / Mama
• Jackie Warren-Moore / Daughters
• Akua Lezli Hope / Water Bears No Scars
• Kim Jenice Dillon / A Thin Neck to Snap
• Viki Radden / Riding the Wheel of Fortune

Part Two: Night Vision: Crack and Violence against Black Women
• bell hooks / the woman's mourning song
• Patricia Spears Jones / Gospel
• Joy Gray / Busted
• ntozake shange / crack annie
• Lucille Clifton / night vision
• Michelle T. Clinton / Child Molestation Is a National Affair
• A. Yemisi Jimoh / Peace Be Still
• Toi Derricotte / On the Turning Up of Unidentified Black Female Corpses
• Ai / Finished
• Patricia Spears Jones / It Must Be Her Heartbreak Talking
• J. California Cooper / Vanity

Part Three: Prelude to an Endnote: The Body's Health
• Alice Walker / The Right to Life: What Can the White Man Say to the Black Woman?
• Terry McMillan / Disappearing Acts
• Laini Mataka / Just Becuz U Believe in Abortion Doesnt Mean U're Not Pro-Life
• Tiye Milan Selah / An Elegy for Jade
• Viki Akiwumi / different ones #6--Future Possibilities (An AIDS Soliloquy)
• Charlotte Watson Sherman / touch
• Kesho Scott / Shadows over Shadows
• Marita Golden / and do remember me
• Fatisha / Prelude to an Endnote

Part Four: An Anointing: Sisterfriends
• Thylias Moss / An Anointing
• Deb Parks-Satterfield / Hummers
• Sherley Anne Williams / The Tree-Line
• Paule Marshall / Daughters
• Akua Lezli Hope / Finishing
• Folisade / More Than a Mouthful
• Deb Parks-Satterfield / Just Desserts

Part Five: Is It True What They Say About Colored Pussy?: Sex
• hattie gossett / is it true what they say about colored pussy?
• Doris L. Harris / Ambrosia
• Folisade / We Always Were
• Jewelle Gomez / Piece of Time
• Toi Derricotte / Dildo
• Toi Derricotte / Clitoris
• Sapphire / There's a Window
• Michelle T. Clinton / Solitude Ain't Loneliness
• Imani Constance Johnson-Burnett / The Dream and Lettie Byrd's Charm
• Evelyn Joyce Reingold / The Liberation of Masturbation
• Patricia Spears Jones / Encounter and Farewell
• Jo Ann Henderson / The Late Mrs. Hadlay

Part Six: Eclipse: Black Women in Love with Men
• karsonya e. wise / revolution starts at 11:50 a.m.//april 2, 1993
• Gloria Naylor / Mama Day
• Mary Walls / Eclipse
• Akua Lezli Hope / Song Through the Wall
• Mattie Richardson / Dues
• jonetta rose barras / duplication
• Sonia Sanchez / Wounded in the House of a Friend

Part Seven: Visitations: Aging
• Colleen McElroy / Middle-age UFO
• Dorothy Randall Gray / Oya Mae's General Store
• Saundra Sharp / How to Fly into 50 (Without a Fear of Flying)
• Maya Angelou / Seven Women's Blessed Assurance
• Lucille Clifton / climbing
• Brenda Bankhead / Visitations
• Gabrielle Daniels / The Rag Man's New Clothes

Part Eight: Sapphire as Artist in the World: Black Women as Creators
• Ruth Forman / If You Lose Your Pen
• Opal Palmer Adisa / Sister Outsider
• gale jackson / rent
• Wanda Coleman / Sapphire as Artist in the World
• Akua Lezli Hope / My Muse Relentless
• Bridgett M. Davis / Bianca

Part Nine: A New Kinda Woman: Twenty-First-Century Black Women
• Kelly Norman Ellis / Raised by Women
• jonetta rose barras / the corner is not a place for hiding
• Tamara Madison-Shaw / Prayer for the Nineties Woman and the Natural Woman Too
• Colleen McElroy / Matchmaker, Matchmaker
• Ruth Forman / At Least Once a Week
• Michelle T. Clinton / Uterus Root
• jonetta rose baras / masks, trumpets, gris gris and us
• Akasha (Glorai T.) Hull / Legacy/Repeat After Me
• hattie gossett / 21st century black warrior wimmins chant for strengthening the nerves and getting yourself together

• Biographies
• Permissions
• Index

Anthology editor(s)' discourse

• Jean Buffong's "Foreword to the British Ediiton" offers a response to the anthology, viewing it as giving voice to black women's lives of the past and present and expressing their hopes and determinations for the present and future (xiii). Buffong's emphasis is on the shared dimensions of these experiences and the desire for solidarity and mutual support (rather than, say, on the diversity of voices and experiences in the collection) (xiii): "'Sisterfire' is the collective voice of Black women breaking barriers" (xv). She extends the discourse of the anthology to take in the experiences of "British-based Black women" (whose experiences, Buffong argues, are continuous with those of the African American women in the anthology) (xiii).
• Buffong sees the publication of the anthology as itself a testimony to a transformation taking place in contemporary society: "'Sisterfire' speaks of hope, despair, pain, joy, struggle, fear and dreams. It speaks of transformations . . . transforming our silences into hurricane-force winds. [ . . . ] Our elder-mothers and ancestors have laid foundations for us to follow; we have learnt so much from their experiences. Their days of being meek and mild, waiting to inherit the earth, are lessons to us; lessons of what fear can do . . . Black women in Britain today, like their American counterparts, are recognising the most dangerous weapon of our oppressors is 'OUR FEAR'. . . . We are recognising more and more that once the barrier of 'fear' is overcome, we can at last begin to credit our senior mothers, aunties, sisters--our once silent voices are now howling. This anthology echoes some of those voices" (xiv). [One understands the sense of greater freedom from fear that is celebrated here, but Buffong's account perhaps under-acknowledges the long history of African American women's voices, from Phillis Wheatley to Sojourner Truth, from Ida B. Wells to Angela Davis, before the current generation that Buffong points to in the early 1990s.]

Reviews and notices of anthology

• "Kirkus Reviews" 1 June 1994.
"A collection of poetry and fiction by 57 African-American women. What's interesting about the choices that Sherman (One Dark Body, 1993, etc.) has made is that, despite the title's assertion of a collective identity, so many of them are so doggedly individualistic and self-expressive. The voices doing the expressing inhabit a range from the emotionally and aesthetically naãve [sic] to the sophisticated, and Sherman's organization of the book implies a process of evolution by which black women gain, individually, their voices and, collectively, their solidarity: The first section is called 'Becoming Fluent,' and the final section is called 'A New Kinda Woman.' There are also sections on sex, violence, aging, being in love with men, and being an artist. Contributors include bell hooks, Paule Marshall, ntozake shange, Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, as well as other, newer voices."

• "Publishers Weekly" 1 Aug. 1994.
"Sherman's ( One Dark Body ) anthology of contemporary poetry and short stories written by and about African-American women is simply stated a page-turner. The more than 50 works divided into nine sections about motherhood, crack and violence, friendship, sex, love and more, poignantly express an experiential truth without resorting to the distasteful or shocking. In J. California Cooper's short story ``Vanity,'' the title character is a woman whose obsession with her looks lead her on a path of loneliness, drugs and self-destruction. Written as if recorded by a family friend, the piece gives an intimate, gossipy glimpse of a tragic life. An excerpt from Marita Golden's novel and do remember me takes a realistic but tender approach toward the subject of breast cancer: ``After a long talk with a friend who had chosen not to wear a prosthesis, Macon decided to wear one. It changed nothing. She remained a one-breasted woman living with cancer.'' Ultimately, a new love interest is able to convince Macon that the uncoupled breast makes no difference to him--and shouldn't to her. With the exception of Toni Morrison, most well-known African American women writers are represented, including Rita Dove, Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, Sonia Sanchez, Maya Angelou, Gloria Naylor and Terry McMillan. The mixture of new authors and seasoned writers makes for a refreshing blend of style and substance."

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