Wanda Coleman enjoys a reputation as a dynamic poet and writer of short fiction that chronicles the lives of poor urban African Americans. One of the writers, including Charles Bukowski and Diane Wakoski, responsible for creating an alternative literary scene in Los Angeles in the 1970s and 1980s, Coleman has yet to be fully recognized by the literary and commercial publishing establishment. Nevertheless, acclaim for her vivid urban-naturalist prose and poetry grew in the 1980s, especially after the publication of A War of Eyes and Other Stories (1988), her first all-fiction volume (previous ones being either poetry or mixtures of poetry and prose). Critical admiration centers on her gripping, taut tales of violence-threatened working-class people who are powerfully portrayed in urban-vernacular language. Her stories and poems -- portraits of homeless people, drug addicts, impotent lovers, welfare mothers, and thwarted dreamers -- are angry, ironic, and politically charged. Coleman reports...