"Speeches and interviews from the last two years of his life.

    She was pretty and independent, petite and not too skinny, just his type. Franklin Swift was a sometimes-employed construction worker, and a not-quite-divorced daddy of two. Zora Banks was a teacher, singer, songwriter. They met in a Brooklyn brownstone, and there could be no walking away... In this funny, gritty urban love story, Franklin and Zora join the ranks of fiction's most compelling couples, as they move from Scrabble to sex, from layoffs to the limits of faith and trust. Disappearing Acts is about the mystery of desire and the burdens of the past. It's about respect, what it can and can't survive. And it's about the safe and secret places that only love can find. --

    This book combines in one volume two now classic short story collections.  The editor has added a new introduction and prefatory material."Mary Helen Washington has had a greater impact upon the formation of the canon of Afro-American literature than has any other scholar." --The New York Times Book Review

    Here in one volume is the measure of this enormous influence on the literary and intellectual history of our time. 8-page photo insert.

    

    In this unusual collection built on historical testimony, Kendrick ( Through the Ceiling ) allows her subjects the medium of poetry through which to speak about their loneliness, bondage and loved ones--mothers, children, men. Voices vary in tone and in diction--some are lyrical, others matter-of-fact; dialect alternates with standard speech--but vigorously announce human strength...---Publisher's Weekly