On Girlhood

August 15, 2021
Fifteen stories, originally published between 1953 and 2018, that center around young Black women. A trip to FAO Schwarz turns into an uncomfortable encounter with economic inequality for Sylvia and her friends in Toni Cade Bambara's "The Lesson," while Princesse in Edwidge Danticat's "Seeing Things Simply" learns a gentler lesson about her own artistic potential from a glamorous French-speaking painter. In Alexia Arthurs' "Bad Behavior," Stacy is left unceremoniously with her grandmother in Jamaica by parents who are "afraid of their fourteen-year-old daughter." Valerie, in Rita Dove's "Fifth Sunday," is determined to win the affections of the minister's "very ugly" son, while Avery, in Dana Johnson's "Melvin in the Sixth Grade," is besotted with the story's titular character, a gangly White kid she calls "My beautiful alien from Planet Cowboy." Collecting the stories of literary giants--Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston--and contemporary authors including Camille Acker and Amina Gautier, the book presents an expansive, decades-spanning view of Black girlhood. "I want to attest to the worthiness of Black girls as they come of age--their need for protection, love, and freedom," Edim writes in the introduction. Organized around the themes of innocence, belonging, love, and self-discovery, the collection is genuinely riveting; the stories narrate the lives of indelible characters with humor, irony, and immense skill. And while each story differs greatly in setting and tone, throughlines arise. Grandmothers, mothers, and sisters loom large in these stories; two of them--"The Richer, The Poorer" by Dorothy West and Alice Walker's "Everyday Use"--center on the dramatic differences in sisters' lives. And throughout, the stories' protagonists often struggle with the projections of the people around them, colored by their Blackness: what the narrator of Paule Marshall's "Reena" calls "that definition of me, of her and millions like us, formulated by others to serve out their fantasies, a definition we have to combat at an unconscionable cost to the self and even use, at times, in order to survive; the cause of so much shame and rage as well as, oddly enough, a source of pride: simply what it has meant, what it means, to be a black woman in America." A profound, prismatic collection.

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August 1, 2021
Edim's first astute, gap-filling anthology, Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves (2018), won the Innovator's Award at the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. Now this ardent booklover and expert reading advocate returns with a collection of 15 striking tales about girlhood, a theme of deep and universal resonance given profoundly illuminating specificity by the Black women writers Edim showcases. Edim begins with how her own girlhood was shaped by her nearly daily visits to the public library, which inspired her devotion to reading as both a personal practice and an act of social communion. She also shares her love for the concentrated beauty and power of the short story and explores how each of these tales "proclaims that Black girlhood matters." Here are established and incandescent writers Toni Cade Bambara, Jamaica Kincaid, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison, whose only published short story is a revelation, along with thrillingly eruptive, scorching, and hilarious stories by Camille Acker, Alexia Arthurs, and Shay Youngblood. Replete with lively author profiles, "Further Reading," and "Discussion Questions," this is a remarkably vital, revealing, and sustaining literary gathering.

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