Concentrating on carefully chosen selections from ten writers, Mary Helen Washington explores the work, the realities, and the hopes of black women writers between 1860 and 1960. Featuring works by Harriet Jacobs, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Pauline E. Hopkins, Fannie Barrier Williams, Marita O. Bonner, Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, Ann Petry, Dorothy West, and Gwendolyn Brooks. Praise for Invented Lives "Mary Helen Washington has done more than any other single critic to expand the Afro-American and Anglo-American feminist canons."--The Women's Review of Books "This collection is, in fact, two fine books in one: at once an anthology and a critical study."--New York Times Book Review "The forceful, uncompromising, and distinctive voice of Mary Helen Washington brings together foremothers and daughters . . . in a volume that presents . . . a century of black women's writing along with a vital new tradition of black feminist criticism."--Marianne Hirsch, Ms. Magazine