In some ways, Arthenia J. Bates Millican personifies the people about whom she writes. She has had the strength to persevere in the face of over-whelming obstacles. Beginning on a note of early promise, her writing career has spanned many decades; yet she has achieved a degree of national recognition as a creative writer only recently. Poet, folklorist, short-story writer, novelist, critic, and scholar, Millican has struggled with a writing career which only flourished in her later life. To say the least, she has been a "late bloomer," but a woman of the times, since it has been the paradox of her lifestyle--bridging the academic and the common worlds--which has made her a spokesperson for the downtrodden, the hopeless, the rejected, but above all, the redeemable.

When Millican was born as Arthenia Bernetta Jackson on 1 June 1920 in Sumter, South Carolina, her family was anything but downtrodden or hopeless...