McCaskill examines three different groundbreaking texts of the second half of the twentieth century: Toni Cade Bambara’s The Black Woman (1970), Lucille Clifton’s Generations (1976), and Patricia Bell-Scott et al.’s Double Stitch (1991). Working backwards and forwards from these three texts, McCaskill’s chapter analyzes ways that Black women turned the tables on previous representations of themselves by Black men and hegemonic others as subordinate citizens, matriarchs, and ciphers.

In the years following Richard Wright’s death in 1960, fellow author Margaret Walker created a somewhat vengeful portrait of the author, one that characterized his literary aspirations as tied to his aspersion for African American women authors. This essay shows how Wright worked alongside African American women writers and could be quite helpful to them – even though he never acknowledged a debt to black women writers or white women writers (like Stowe), with the exception of the modernist Stein. The “antagonistic cooperation” found in his relationships with Hurston, Walker, Brooks, and other women authors ultimately demonstrates African American literature’s gradual enrichment through variety if not fellowship.