These Hands I Know

These Hands I Know offers readers the first-ever intimate view of the inner workings of black family life from the point of view of prose and poetry writers. This collection of seventeen essays includes portraits of fathers, mothers, nieces, brothers, grandparents, husbands, wives, and daughters—in short the full spectrum of absolute humanity in contemporary black families. Here, in letter form, a man speaks to his aunt, the family matriarch. A daughter rejects her father’s ideas of African-American identity. A young woman holds her niece in her hands for the very first time. And a son faces his father as an old man and finally comes to terms with his failings. These Hands I Know seeks to gather a resolutely honest picture of family life, however painful or joyous that truth may be. "Family life is an insistent vessel traveling the space of our struggles to love and to be loved. . . . Africans and their descendants in America have always been nothing more and nothing less than human. If anything is constant and universal, it is suffering—personal, social, and political. If these essays offer anything, it is the affirmation of humanity."—From the Introduction by Afaa Michael Weaver Marketing Plans: Advertisements in key literary and trade magazines Newsletter, brochure, catalog, and postcard mailings Reader copies available to booksellers through participation in Book Sense Advance Access Program Contributors include: Fred D'Aguiar Tara Betts Gwendolyn Brooks Karen Chandler Edwidge Danticat Jarvis Q. DeBerry Gerald Early Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Lise Funderburg Walter Warren Harper Honorée Fanonne Jeffers Trent Masiki E. Ethelbert Miller Marilyn Nelson Kalamu ya Salaam Della Scott Alice Walker Also available by Afaa Michael Weaver Multitudes: Poems Selected and New TC $24.00, 1-889330-40-X • CUSA TP $14.95, 1-889330-41-8 • CUSA