Walker's first short-story collection, In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women (1973), includes "Roselily" and other stories of vulnerable women looking for dignity and love.

The Color Purple (1982) is Walker's novel about Celie, a woman who finds inner strength after a life of abuse and abandonment. It won both the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award.

In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens (1983) is Walker's collection of "womanist prose," or essays, about women and art.

Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) was one of the first novels to use the voice of a poor Southern African-American woman. It is the story of Janie Crawford, who refuses to be limited by bitterness and pain.

Cane (1923) is by Jean Toomer, a major writer of the Harlem Renaissance. The first section of the book contains several stories of Southern black women...