Fifteen writers of essays and poems share their poignant and personal views on life as African American women during the Harlem Renaissance. Some of the robust narratives are reprinted here for the first time. The poems are a few of a wide net of poetry written by women of the era that explore themes of gender and race.

No matter what combination of experiences a reader brings to each piece in this volume, they are bound to be, on some level, enlightened.

Essays:

How it Feels to be Colored Me by Zora Neale Hurston / On Being Young—a Woman—and Colored by Marita O. Bonner / Some Notes on Color by Jessie Redmon Fauset / Black by Nellie R. Bright / The Pink Hat by Caroline Bond Day / I— by Brenda Ray Moryck / Why? by Lena Williams / The Task of Negro Womanhood by Elise Johnson McDougald.

Poems:

To a Dark Girl by Gwendolyn Bennett / Sybil Warns Her Sister by Anne Spencer / Goal by Mae V. Cowdery / Revelation by Blanche Taylor Dickinson / The Heart of a Woman by Georgia Douglas Johnson / The Black Finger by Angelina Weld Grimké / My Race by Helene Johnson.