Organized under 10 familial categories--from wives and husbands to mothers and sons to the extended family--this potpourri of stories, excerpts from novels, and poems explores the many ways the generations connect. The standout is James Baldwin's sensitive, intense tale of a young man's struggle with drugs and despair, and the healing power of art in Harlem in the 1950s. Ernest Gaines tells a penetrating story of the lessons a mother teaches her son about power and compassion. Jamaica Kincaid describes a West Indian childhood as a ``paradise'' of love until the mother abruptly changes the rules when her daughter reaches adolescence. A young girl becomes an unwilling witness to the small humiliations her mother must suffer at the welfare office in Paulette Childress White's story. Toni Cade Bambara writes about a feisty child who demands to be taken seriously by her uncle, one of the adults who ``figure they can treat you just anyhow.'' Replete with vivid narratives and illuminating insights, this is an engrossing collection. Washington edited Invented Lives: Narratives of Black Women 1860-1960. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

YA-- This collection of 19 stories, 12 poems, and 15 critical commentaries offers YAs a fertile field to explore when they think about the concept of family. Shattering the myth of the ideal family, these pieces deal with the ever-shifting struggles of American blacks to maintain family patterns . Probing black traditions, cultural patterns, and dialects, the writers paint pictures of as many different families as there are stories and poems in this volume. While most of the selections are from a female viewpoint, readers do have opportunities to see the experience of the black male as well. Students of all ethnic origins will better understand the storyof American blacks if they listen to the voices Washington has assembled here.-- Margaret C. Nolan, W. T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A wide-ranging collection of short stories and poetry dealing with the African American family experience. Editor Washington has selected vivid pieces that reveal the complexities of traditional and not-so-traditional relationships. Grouped by type of relation--parent and child, brothers and sisters, grandparents--these pieces portray all the love and hate, struggle and triumph, intimacy and separation of families living and persevering. In the choice of authors for inclusion here, there is some overlap with McMillan's recent anthology Breaking Ice: An Anthology of Contemporary African-American Fiction [BKL O 1 90]--e.g., Ernest J. Gaines, John Edgar Wideman, Toni Cade Bambara, Alice Walker--but Washington's individual selections are totally different. Includes brief biographical notes on individual contributors. ~--John Brosnahan

This is an anthology of short stories and poems by black writers that allows readers to challenge their traditional views of the family. Works by Alice Walker, James Baldwin, Rita Dove, Charles Chesnutt, and Paule Marshall show readers how to deal with familial tensions and how to appreciate their own kin. As Washington notes in her introduction, ``The story of family has inspired some of the very best writing by black writers.'' Hers is a refreshing approach that will leave readers full of emotion and an unsatisfied yearning for more.-- Gayle S. Leach, Wayne State Univ. Lib., Detroit (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.