Invented Lives - Hardcover

In this companion volume to her anthology of stories by Black women writers, "Any Woman's Blues", the author explores the works and the worlds of Black American women writers between 1860 and 1960. Bringing together selected short stories and novel extracts from ten writers - Harriet Jacobs, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Pauline E.Hopkins, Fannie Barrier Williams, Marita Bonner, Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, Ann Petry, Dorothy West and Gwendolyn Brooks - she introduces a range of voices and draws out the hidden and overt challenges of a body of work rich in cultural, political and literary meaning. "Invented lives" also includes six chapters in which Mary Helen Washington examines black women writers' search for a narrative structure appropriate to their experiences in American society.