"An engaging saga of unconditional friendship, love, and foregiveness...Golden's style is modern, refreshing and accurately captures a slice of African-American life."
ST. PETERSBURG TIMES
In the exciting, yet frightening days of Freedom Summer in 1963, two very different African-American women meet, each to discover in the other an elegant completion of herself. Jessie, running from her sexually abusive father and distant mother, is a born actress. In the movement she discovers an unknown world of personal freedom that could shape her into an extraordinary talent or destroy her from...

The compelling story of three black women who meet at a New England college in the late sixties and form a friendship that will guide them through the changes, the joys, and the tears of the coming years
Faith, small-boned and delicate, the daughter of a strong-willed mother and a father she no longer remembers, longs for the one experience that will show her to herself. Serena, a passionate and outspoken radical, has an intense political commitment and pride in her African roots, which will lead her to find a life on a continent far away. And Crystal, a poet from girlhood, has a...

Bringing together fourteen African-American women, Marita Golden has compiled saucy and spicy essays that serve as an exploration into the contemporary black female psyche. Ranging in style from Audre Lorde's classic polemic on eroticism to Miriam DeCosta Willis's deeply moving essay on her husband's last years, "every single one of these essays is terrific." -- The Washington Post

When Marita Golden decided to write her personal account of the challenges of raising a black son in today's world, she didn't intend to write more than her own family's story. But through the story of raising her son against the backdrop of a racially divided society, Golden discovered she was also confronting the causes of the violence that surrounds African-American men.
In the fierecely lyrical and revealing narrative of Saving Our Sons, she has created a work of profound and lasting importance one that sensitively and uniquely addresses the problems of boyhood and emerging...

A Miracle Every Day takes an illuminating and intimate look at flourishing single-mother families. Single motherhood and the children of single mothers have been the subject of overwhelmingly negative statistical analysis. But, asks Marita Golden, where are the studies that analyze the strengths of single mothers, the positive adaptive skills learned by their children, the support systems that help these families work?
In A Miracle Every Day Golden, once a single mother herself, and several other single mothers and their family members share their success stories with great...

"A novel of impressive artistry and power." The Washington Post
Caught in the web of history, generations of an African-American family play out their parts on a world stage that constantly changes, protected always by the love of one another, which never will.

This volume brings together the complete fiction of the author of Passing and Quicksand, one of the most gifted writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Throughout her short but brilliant literary career, Nella Larsen wrote piercing dramas about the black middle class that featured sensitive, spirited heroines struggling to find a place where they belonged. Passing, Larsen s best-known work, is a disturbing story about the unraveling lives of two childhood friends, one of whom turns her back on her past and marries a white bigot. Just as disquieting is the portrait in...

A literary rent party to benefit the Hurston/Wright Foundation of African-American fiction, with selections to savor from bestselling authors as well as talented rising stars.
Not since Terry McMillan s" Breaking Ice" have so many African-American writers been brought together in one volume. A stellar collection of works from more than fifty hot names in fiction, "Gumbo" represents remarkable synergy. Edited by bestselling luminaries Marita Golden and E. Lynn Harris, this collection spans new and previously published tales of love and luck, inspiration and violation, hip new worlds and...

In her long-awaited fifth novel, acclaimed writer Marita Golden takes another unflinching look into the face of family, race, love and identity.
For twelve years Carson Blake inhabited a world of his own creation. Scorned by the father who was incapable of showing him affection and nearly consumed by the mean streets of Prince George s County, Maryland, Carson did what no one else could: he saved himself.
After joining the police force and building a family with his wife, Bunny, Carson is finally in control of his life in the enclave where African American wealth and privilege shares...

Don t play in the sun. You re going to have to get a light-skinned husband for the sake of your children as it is.
In these words from her mother, novelist and memoirist Marita Golden learned as a girl that she was the wrong color. Her mother had absorbed colorism without thinking about it. But, as Golden shows in this provocative book, biases based on skin color persist and so do their long-lasting repercussions.
Golden recalls deciding against a distinguished black university because she didn t want to worry about whether she was light enough to be homecoming queen. A male...