Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1973) by Linda Brent was originally published with the assistance of a white woman named L. Maria Child in 1861. This book has become a crucial piece in nineteenth-century American literature. Though the slave narrative constitutes its own genre, Brent's book is one of the few written by a woman.

"Everyday Use" by Alice Walker is a short story that explores many of the same themes about African-American culture that Wideman's stories do. Walker also experiments with the same techniques of integrating oral culture into the story format.

Cane (1923) by Jean Toomer uses experimental techniques drawn both from literary modernism and from traditional African-American culture. Toomer renders a richly textured and powerful portrait of the lives of African Americans in the South. This is one of the books that Wideman cites as an influence...