Alice Walker’s first published book collects poems written as a student and on her first visit to Africa For readers seeking the origins of Alice Walker’s potent, distinctive voice, this collection will provide ample insight. Composed while she was still a student at Sarah Lawrence College in the late 1960s, these poems are already engaged with some of the moral dilemmas that have defined Walker’s entire career. Luminous vignettes from her...

Short fiction about the female experience from the New York Times–bestselling author of The Color Purple, “one of the best American writers of today” (The Washington Post).  Here are stories of women traveling with the weight of broken dreams, with kids in tow, with doubt and regret, with memories of lost loves, with lovers who have their own hard pasts and hard edges. Some from the South, some from the North, some rich and some poor, the characters...