The history of African-American life and thought presented in this anthology represents a far-reaching written and oral tradition, which is thought-provoking, inspiring, and impressive in its breadth. It includes poetry and prose by today's best and most well-known writers.
This is an unusual array of writings by African Americans. Beginning with Olaudah Equiano's 1789 slave narrative and ending with Congresswoman Maxine Waters's testimony before the Senate Banking Committee in 1992 on the Los Angeles riots, this welcome anthology brings together a diversity of voices. It includes fiction, autobiography, poetry, songs, and letters by such writers as Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, W.E.B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, and Richard Wright. Many topics are covered, from slavery, education, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and political issues to spirituals, songs of the Civil Rights movement, and rap music. To conclude, there's the surprising addition of Jesse Jackson's 1984 address to the Democratic National Convention. This book supersedes Richard A. Long and Eugenia W. Collier's Afro-American Writing: An Anthology of Prose and Poetry (Pennsylvania State Univ. Pr., 1985). Essential for literary collections.-- Ann Burns, ``Library Journal''