"As Iola finished, there was a ring of triumph in her voice, as if she were reviewing a path she had trodden with bleeding feet, and seen it change to lines of living light. Her soul seemed to be flashing through the rare loveliness of her face and etherealizing its beauty. Everyone was spellbound. Dr. Latimer was entranced, and, turning to Hon. Dugdale, said, in a low voice and with deep-drawn breath," She is angelic!...She is strangely beautiful!...The tones of her voice are like benedictions of peace; her words a call to higher service and nobler life."
-Iola Leroy, written by Francis E.W. Harper. 1892
When I was thirteen I fell in love with African American Women's Literature. The novel that done me in was Alice Walker's A Color Purple. In under grad I knew there is a God when Agnes Scott College offered a course called Black Feminist Thought. What I didn't know was that my soul would leap for a more womanist kind of fiction- Christian Fiction. More...
