mains uncertain about her possible sexual orien-
tation and identity, responds, “Carla, if you can’t
accept me for who I am, no matter what, then our
friendship is really tired” (224).
Jean’s sexual identity is further confused by
the fact that she has strong emotional ties to (and
perhaps even secret desires for some form of in-
timacy with) Nurse Horn, the white nurse at her
high school, for whom she works as a work-study
student. When the Afro-Club meets to determine
whether to oust Nurse Horn and replace her with
a black nurse, Jean feels obligated to defend her
mentor and friend before her peers, even if she is
the only one to do so. When Carla confronts Jean
about her friendship with Nurse Horn, Jean sim-
ply responds, “good people come in all colors and
types, just the same as bad people” (224). At the
end of the novel, Jean comes to the realization and
accepts the fact that she, like Nurse Horn, may well
“march to the beat of a different drummer” (238).
When Jean seeks Nurse Horn’s advice about her
thoughts, Nurse Horn tells her, “because you have
a schoolgirl crush on me doesn’t make you a ho-
mosexual” (234), while encouraging, “shine by be-
coming more who you already are” (238).
Simultaneously, throughout Coffee Will Make
You Black, Sinclair reverses some of the issues
Hansberry explored in A Raisin in the Sun by turn-
ing the camera inward, providing insights into in-
traracial issues of color and exploring how, during
an important historical period of black empow-
erment, blacks were still color struck. Like her
grandmother’s and mother’s generations, which
looked askance at blackness as a symbol of ugli-
ness (hence the relevance of the novel’s title) Jean’s
generation still values beauty if it is closer to white.
Jean’s brother, David, is attracted to Shantelle, a
militant member of the Afro Club that is seeking
to replace Nurse Horn, because she is light skinned
with green eyes.
Coffee Will Make You Black was received with
mixed reviews. The American Library Association
named Coffee Will Make You Black Book of the Year
(young adult fiction) for 1994, and the Friends of
the Chicago Public Library awarded Sinclair the
Carl Sandburg Award for her debut novel. Sinclair
lives in Berkeley, California.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baxter, Nicky. “A Second Cup of Coffee for April Sin-
clair.” Review of Ain’t Gonna Be the Same Twice.
Available online. URL: http://www.metroactive.
com/papers/metro/04.25.96/sinclair-9617.html.
Accessed October 26, 2006.
Sinclair, April. Coffee Will Make You Black. New York:
Hyperion, 1994.
Wilfred D. SamuelsSlade, Leonard, Jr. (1942– )
Born in Conway, North Carolina, Leonard Slade,
Jr., is the oldest son of the nine children of Eliz-
abeth and Leonard Slade, Sr. He grew up on the
family’s 75-acre farm, where siblings and parents
worked side by side, harvesting peanuts, cotton,
and corn. For the young Slade, gathering peanuts
was not as burdensome as picking cotton, which
cut his fingers.
Slade attended W. S. Creecy High School in seg-
regated Rich Square, North Carolina. Like all of his
siblings, Leonard attended college, earning a B.A.
degree in English from North Carolina’s Elizabeth
City State University, an M.A. degree in English
from Virginia State University, and a Ph.D. degree
in English from the University of Illinois at Ur-
bana-Champaign. He taught for 22 years at Ken-
tucky State University, where he was also chair of
the division of literature, languages, and philoso-
phy and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
Slade developed his love for literature, specifi-
cally such poets as William Shakespeare and the
British romantic poets William Wordsworth and
John Keats, while an undergraduate. He did not
become interested in such major black writers as
LANGSTON HUGHES, GWENDOLYN BROOKS, RICHARD
WRIGHT, and RALPH ELLISON until he was engaged in
his Ph.D. work. To date, he has published 15 books,
including 11 books of poetry: Another Black Voice:
A Different Drummer (1988), The Beauty of Black-
ness (1989), I Fly like a Bird (1992), The Whipping
Song (1993), Vintage (1995), Fire Burning (1995),
Pure Light (1996), Neglecting the Flowers (1997),
Lilacs in Spring (1998), Elisabeth and Other Poems
(1999), and For the Love of Freedom (2000).Slade, Leonard, Jr. 467