Cheryl A. Wall, ed., Changing Our Own Words: Essays on Criticism, Theory,
and Writing by Black Women (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University
Press, 1989).
Proceedings of a conference held at Rutgers University in October 1987.
PEOPLE OF INTEREST
Ai (1947–2010)
Multiracial poet of Japanese, black, and Native American descent. Her works are
Cruelty (1973); Killing Floor (1979), which won the Lamont Poetry Award; Sin
(1986), which won the American Book Award; Greed (1993); Vice (1999), which
received the National Book Award for Poetry; and Dread (2003). She was born
Florence Anthony; her adopted name means “love” in Japanese.
Meena Alexander (1951– )
Poet and fiction writer, born Mary Elizabeth Alexander in India and raised there
and in Sudan. Her first books of poems were published in Arabic translation
when she was still a teenager. She has written The Bird ’s Bright Ring (1976),
Without Place (1977), Stone Roots (1980), Fault Lines: A Memoir (1993), Manhat-
tan Music (1997), and Raw Silk (2004).
Paula Gunn Allen (1939–2008)
Poet, novelist, and literary critic of Laguna, Sioux, and Lebanese-American
descent who grew up in the Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico. Her works of
criticism include The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian
Traditions (1986) and Off the Reservation: Reflections on Boundary-Busting Border-
Crossing Loose Canons (1998). Among her other works are the novel The Woman
Who Owned the Shadows (1983) and Skins and Bones: Poems 1979–1987 (1988).
Dorothy Allison (1949– )
Self-described “working class storyteller” whose novel Bastard out of Carolina
(1992) brought her recognition. Her other works include the novel Cavedweller
(1998) and the short-story collection Trash (2002).
Julia Alvarez (1950– )
Novelist and poet who grew up in New York after spending the first ten years of
her life in the Dominican Republic, which her family fled because of her father’s
involvement in a political rebellion. She is best known for her novels How the
Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (1991), In the Time of the Butterflies (1994), and
¡Yo! (1997). Her poetry has been collected as Homecoming: New and Selected Poems
(1984).
Gloria Anzaldúa (1942–2004)
Feminist and cultural theorist best known for This Bridge Called My Back: Writ-
ings by Radical Women of Color (1981), coedited with Cherríe Moraga, and the
autobiographical Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987), which she
described as “autohistoria-teoría.”