The beauty, sorrow and tragic fall of an incestuous African American family in Washington, D.C. is linked to failures of national destiny, religion, and the crime of slavery.

Come to Kenilworth, a neighborhood in Washington, DC in the year 1931, where Little Georgia Johnson lives with her seven siblings and their parents. On a very hot August day Little Georgia leaves her sisters and brothers at the house, and makes the long, long walk to Mr. Benson's store to buy apples for everyone.

Centered around the themes of death, women as objects of desire, lost love, motherhood, and children, the poems in this selection offer insight into the work of this well-known abolitionist and advocate of women's rights. Including Grimke's prose and drama, which often focus on lynching, this volume sheds new light on a perspective characterized by the African-American experience of racial pride and the reaction against racists acts.

Volume 1 of the 2 volume novel, Asenath and Our Song of Songs, shares scenes from the life of Shirah Shulamit Ojero, an African American Jewish girl and woman, growing up in Washington, DC. Shirah reexamines and affirms her Judaic ancestry, becomes a graduate student studying epic poetry at the University of Pen Forest, and in the process of writing her doctoral dissertation discovers that hair as nappy as hers has existed only once before - on the head of Ancient Egyptian Asenath. The entertwined stories of Shirah and Asenath becomes a quest for a book unknown in heaven, and leads them...