Family and history -- A slow walk of trees (as grandmother would say), hopeless (as grandfather would say) -- She and me -- What the black woman thinks about women's lib -- A knowing so deep -- Behind the making of The black book -- Rediscovering black history -- Rootedness: the ancestor as foundation -- The site of memory -- Writers and writing -- On behalf of Henry Dumas -- Preface to Deep sightings and rescue missions by Toni Cade Bambara -- James Baldwin: his voice remembered; life in his language -- Speaking of Reynolds Price -- To be a black woman: review of Portraits in fact and fiction -- The family came first: review of Labor of love, labor of sorrow -- Toni Morrison on a book she loves: Gayl Jones's Corregidora -- Going home with bitterness and joy: review of South to a very old place by Albert Murray -- On The radiance of the king by Camara Laye -- Foreword to The Harlem book of the dead -- Foreword to Writing red: an anthology of American women writers, 1930-1940 -- The fisherwoman: Introduction to A kind of rapture: photographs -- Politics and society -- On the backs of blacks -- The talk of the town -- The dead of September 11 -- For a heroic writers movement -- Remarks given at the Howard University Charter Day convocation -- The future of time: literature and diminished expectations -- The dancing mind -- How can values be taught in the university -- The Nobel lecture in literature.