Stories Seen Through Screen Doors: The Roots and Branches of Black Southern Experience

Stories Seen Through Screen Doors The Roots and Branches of Black Southern Experience A truth seldom recognized is that there are almost as many African American southern experiences as there are states and cities in the South. Our lives as southern black people intersect, but they also diverge into unique patterns of learning, growth, and discovery. The stories contained in this collection illustrate some of those similarities as well as the differences. Wanda Macon shares with millions of African Americans a southern soil that is rich in family, church, and racial repression, but she also highlights the spiritedness of a tomboyish young girl, too smart for her preschool age, formed by a variety of occurrences in her small southern community. "The Courts," a horseshoe shaped neighborhood and home to twenty-three families located in fictional Friarsdale, Mississippi, is the site for experience, memory, reflection, and locating one's self in the history of the geography as well as the history of family and community. By Trudier Harris, University Distinguished Research Professor Department of English, The University of Alabama Tuscaloosa, Alabama

Dr. Wanda C. Macon Born in Clarksdale, Mississippi, Dr. Wanda Macon attended Jackson State University, where she received her undergraduate and graduate Liberal Arts degrees in Literature and Mass Communications. She taught at Lane College, The Ohio State University, Mississippi State University, University of Mississippi and her undergraduate alma mater, Jackson State University. She taught American Literature, African American Literature, Seminar Courses, Creative Writing, World Literature and Honors Composition. She has published in The Oxford Companion of African American Literature 1997 and 2000. Her creative work has been published in Black Magnolias, Volume 3, Number 1, March-May, 200 and the Literary Journal of Coahoma Community College. Presently she lives between Michigan and Nassau, Bahamas, where she continues to write about the rich culture of the Island.