Family and history. A slow walk of trees (as grandmother would say), hopeless (as grandfather would say) ; She and me ; What the black woman thinks about women's lib ; A knowing so deep ; Behind the making of The black book ; Rediscovering black history ; Rootedness: the ancestor as foundation ; The site of memory
Writers and writing. On behalf of Henry Dumas ; Preface to Deep sightings and rescue missions by Toni Cade Bambara ; James Baldwin: his voice remembered; life in his language ; Speaking of Reynolds Price ; To be a black woman: review of Portraits in fact and fiction ; The family came first: review of Labor of love, labor of sorrow ; Toni Morrison on a book she loves: Gayl Jones's Corregidora ; Going home with bitterness and joy: review of South to a very old place by Albert Murray ; On The radiance of the king by Camara Laye ; Foreword to The Harlem book of the dead ; Foreword to Writing red: an anthology of American women writers, 1930-1940 ; The fisherwoman: Introduction to A kind of rapture: photographs
Politics and society. On the backs of blacks ; The talk of the town ; The dead of September 11 ; For a heroic writers movement ; Remarks given at the Howard University Charter Day convocation ; The future of time: literature and diminished expectations ; The dancing mind ; How can values be taught in the university ; The Nobel lecture in literature.