Life Notes

the long version

Life Notes is the first collection devoted exclusively to writings from the journals, diaries, and personal notebooks of contemporary Black women by the author of the best-selling Double Stitch: Black Women Write About Mothers and Daughters. In her foreword to this volume Marcia Ann Gillespie writes, "Keeping a journal is an extraordinarily intimate activity, sharing what we write is to allow another to peer through a delicate window where we stand without covers.". In this beautiful collection of intensely personal testimonies, 50 courageous writers illuminate the complexities of Black women's lives, offering unique reflections about self, family, intimacy, work, politics, life transitions, violation, and recovery. Among the contributors are well-known writers as well as emerging and previously unpublished writers. A diverse group, they are native daughters from three continents and the Caribbean, the youngest an eight-year-old Nigerian girl and the oldest a sixty-five-year-old retired African American telephone operator.