The problem is that there are more portrayals of the way other people see African American women than the ways we see ourselves. The narrative voice of African American women is largely disregarded, unfamiliar, and stifled. This collection of fiction and creative non-fiction as prayers, poems, short stories, rants, recollections, fantasies, aspirations, divulgences of secrets, accounts of omitted truths, and interpretations of witnessed miracles is meant to add Nancy Lynne Westfield''s voice to the stories about African American women by African American women. She offers her stories, and the stories of her family, real and imagined, so African American women are better understood as being creative, multi-dimensional, whole, rounded, complicated, edgy, non-monolithic, and ordinary. These stories, written from three decades of womanist ethnographic research, are meant to persuade that Black women''s experience matters to the flourishing of all humanity, and most especially matters to the persistence of African American women, and men and our children--all the kinds of families. These stories provide glimpses of Westfield''s understanding of Blackness, anti-Blackness, womanhood, misogyny, and enfleshment. These stories expand what is known about the ways we build, love, suffer, teach, heal, enjoy our friends, make meaning out of our circumstances, and survive. They offer a glimpse of our collective wisdom.

The problem is that there are more portrayals of the way other people see African American women than the ways we see ourselves. The narrative voice of African American women is largely disregarded, unfamiliar, and stifled. This collection of fiction and creative non-fiction as prayers, poems, short stories, rants, recollections, fantasies, aspirations, divulgences of secrets, accounts of omitted truths, and interpretations of witnessed miracles is meant to add Nancy Lynne Westfield''s voice to the stories about African American women by African American women. She offers her stories, and the stories of her family, real and imagined, so African American women are better understood as being creative, multi-dimensional, whole, rounded, complicated, edgy, non-monolithic, and ordinary. These stories, written from three decades of womanist ethnographic research, are meant to persuade that Black women''s experience matters to the flourishing of all humanity, and most especially matters to the persistence of African American women, and men and our children--all the kinds of families. These stories provide glimpses of Westfield''s understanding of Blackness, anti-Blackness, womanhood, misogyny, and enfleshment. These stories expand what is known about the ways we build, love, suffer, teach, heal, enjoy our friends, make meaning out of our circumstances, and survive. They offer a glimpse of our collective wisdom.

The problem is that there are more portrayals of the way other people see African American women than the ways we see ourselves. The narrative voice of African American women is largely disregarded, unfamiliar, and stifled. This collection of fiction and creative non-fiction as prayers, poems, short stories, rants, recollections, fantasies, aspirations, divulgences of secrets, accounts of omitted truths, and interpretations of witnessed miracles is meant to add Nancy Lynne Westfield''s voice to the stories about African American women by African American women. She offers her stories, and the stories of her family, real and imagined, so African American women are better understood as being creative, multi-dimensional, whole, rounded, complicated, edgy, non-monolithic, and ordinary. These stories, written from three decades of womanist ethnographic research, are meant to persuade that Black women''s experience matters to the flourishing of all humanity, and most especially matters to the persistence of African American women, and men and our children--all the kinds of families. These stories provide glimpses of Westfield''s understanding of Blackness, anti-Blackness, womanhood, misogyny, and enfleshment. These stories expand what is known about the ways we build, love, suffer, teach, heal, enjoy our friends, make meaning out of our circumstances, and survive. They offer a glimpse of our collective wisdom.