SOURCE: Whitley, Edward. “‘A Long Missing Part of Itself’: Bringing Lucille Clifton's Generations into American Literature.” MELUS 26, no. 2 (summer 2001): 47-64.

In the following essay, Whitley compares Clifton's Generations to Walt Whitman's “Song of Myself” in the context of the American literary tradition.

Poet Lucille Clifton recently said that her early writings form part of a movement that “brought to American literature a long missing part of itself” (Rowell 67). Her 1976 memoir, Generations, traces her genealogy back to the African matriarch first brought to America and shows the obstacles Clifton personally must overcome to bring this story into American literature. Clifton says of the importance of incorporating her family's story into a larger tradition,

All of our stories become The Story. If mine is left out, something's missing. So I hope mine can be read as part of The Story, of what it means to be human in this place...