Martha Southgate: A Writer For My Generation!
I went to the internet to look for contemporary black literary writers and literature. I could not find any. One of the local librarians suggested that I search the fiction collection for books with the red, yellow and green African American stickers. Those stickers usually annoy me because I think they unnecessarily separate writers based on ethnicity, but this time I was glad. I found a writer who composes stories that makes plain the complexities of the African African comtemporary experience. Books such as The Bluest Eye or Passing tell the stories of my parents' and grandparents' generation. Their experiences contributed to who I am, but because of their sacrifices my life experience is not the same as theirs. Martha Southgate writes with clarity and insight about the circusmstances of life after the civil rights movement. Southgate's first novel was 1996's Another Way to Dance. It is...