"We're more interested in secondary school students or even the man or woman on the street who want the information but don't want to wade through the jargon of contemporary theory to get it," Samuels explains.
Readers will find many well-known autobiographers, critic-scholars, dramatists, novelists and poets among the entries — from Paul Laurence Dunbar to Toni Morrison.
But there will also be a number of bona fide "finds." For example, the encyclopedia will document the "Black queer" renaissance, which produced writers such as the poet G. Winston James and the fiction writer Thomas Glave, whom many have begun calling "an early Jimmy Baldwin, both in terms of subject matter and in terms of talent," Samuels notes.
Writers of children's literature will be included, as will the many important genre writers who have emerged in the last decade: from Tananarive Due, Nalo Hopkinson and Octavia Butler in the sci-fi/fantasy/horror genre to E. Lynn Harris in romance and Walter Mosley in mystery.
"We are excited by the diversity," Samuels says. "I think African American literature is ‘where it's at' in American literature"— and A Gift of Story and Song will certainly help to prove it.
© Copyright 2005 by DiverseEducation.com
