Children of the Night: The Best Short Stories by Black Writers, 1967 to Present

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In 1969, Little, Brown and Company published The Best Short Stories by Black Writers, edited by Langston Hughes - the classic compendium of African-American short fiction from 1897 to 1967. Now, a quarter of a century later, Gloria Naylor has compiled an encore volume, Children of the Night, bringing this extraordinary series up to date.

Gathering together the most gifted black writers of our time - from 1967 to the present - Naylor has assembled a rich and varied collection of stories. The portrait that emerges of the African-American experience in the post-Civil Rights era is stirring, compelling, sometimes disturbing, and certainly provocative. Naylor has arranged the stories thematically so the reader focuses on a particular subject - slavery, for example, or the family. In the hands of different writers, these themes provide a wealth and variety of human experience.

The stories are more than testimonies of the long battle for survival. From a young woman's struggles with her barren faith in Alice Walker's lyrical "The Diary of an African Nun" to an innocent man's involvement in a horrifying act of violence in Ann Petry's "The Witness", they are, as Naylor states in her introduction, "examples of affirmation: of memory, of history, of family, of being". They are stories for all of us "at the beginning: of mankind as a species; of America as a nation; of the African-American as a full citizen".

The tale of Gorgik / Samuel Delaney --
Meditations on history / Sherley Anne Williams --
Damballah / John Edgar Wideman --
Louisiana: 1850 / Jewelle Gomez --
Remember him a outlaw / Alexis DeVeaux --
Mother / Andrea Lee --
Long distances / Jewell Parker Rhodes --
After dreaming of President Johnson / Howard Gordon --
Neighbors / Diane Oliver --
The witness / Ann Petry --
Steady going up / Maya Angelou --
The lesson / Toni Cade Bambara --
Kiswana Browne / Gloria Naylor --
Second-hand man / Rita Dove --
Crusader Rabbit / Jess Mowry --
Silences / Helen Elaine Lee --
Proper library / Carolyn Ferrell --
Diary of an African nun / Alice Walker --
In a house of wooden monkeys / Shay Youngblood --
Young Reverend Zelma Lee Moses / Joyce Carol Thomas --
Tell me how long the train's been gone / James Baldwin --
By the way of morning fire / Michael Weaver --
China / Charles Johnson --
Blackness / Jamaica Kincaid --
Lost in the city / Edward P. Jones --
Run, mourner, run / Randall Kenan --
Blues for Little Prez / Sam Greenlee --
Ma'Dear / Terry McMillan --
Transaction / Kelvin Christopher James --
A loaf of bread / James Alan McPherson --
Backwacking, a plea to the senator / Ralph Ellison --
The woman who would eat flowers / Colleen McElroy --
And love them? / Thonmas Glave --
An area in the cerebral hemisphere / Clarence Major --
Oh she gotta head fulla hair / Ntozake Shange --
That place / Carolivia Herron --
New York day women / Edwidge Danticat