Centers of the self : [electronic resource] stories by black American women from the nineteenth century to the present / edited and with an introduction by Judith A. Hamer and Martin J. Hamer.

The two offers / Frances Ellen Watkins Harper -- After many day : a Christmas story / Fannie Barrier Williams -- The stones of the village / Alice Dunbar-Nelson -- Mary Elizabeth / Jessie Redmon Fauset -- Goldie / Angelina Weld Grimke -- One boy's story / Marita Bonner -- Sanctuary / Nella Larsen -- The gilded six-bits / Zora Neale Hurston -- The typewriter / Dorothy West -- See how they run / Mary Elizabeth Vroman -- Miss Muriel / Ann Petry -- Key to the city / Diane Oliver -- To Da-duh, in memoriam / Paule Marshall -- To hell with dying / Alice Walker -- Tell Martha not to moan / Sherley Anne Williams -- Marigolds / Eugenia W. Collier -- After Saturday night comes Sunday / Sonia Sanchez -- My Man Bovanne / Toni Cade Bambara -- Jevata / Gayl Jones -- Sister Detroit / Colleen McElroy -- Comin to terms / Ntozake Shange -- Requiem for Willie Lee / Frenchy Hodges -- Damon and Vandalia / Rita Dove -- The world of Rosie Polk / Ann Allen Shockley -- Hoodoo / Connie Porter -- Willie Bea and Jaybird / Tina McElroy Ansa -- Song of Roland / Jamaica Kincaid.

Twenty-seven stories by black American women. They write on being abandoned by men, on maintaining spiritual strength and on the search for an identity. With biographies of the writers.