Clearly Virginia Hamilton is concerned as a writer with the black, or non-white, experience. To the best of my recollection, no fictional character in any of her work up to the time of writing is white. But there is no taint of racism in her books; as she said herself in [her article "High John is Risen Again"] 'the experience of a people must come to mean the experience of humankind.' All through her work runs an awareness of black history, and particularly of black history in America. And there is a difference in the furniture of her writing mind from that of most of her white contemporaries: dream, myth, legend and ancient story can be sensed again and again in the background of naturalistically-described present-day events.

Her first book, Zeely …, exemplifies this and other Hamilton qualities. Elizabeth, who is calling herself Geeder by way of make-believe...