All about Skin
Short Fiction by Women of Color
Edited by Jina Ortiz and Rochelle Spencer
Foreword by Helena María Viramontes
Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the American Association of School Librarians
Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the Public Library Reviewers
“All about Skin is electrifying and absolutely necessary. Within you will find
the true heart of a literature.”
—Junot Díaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of
Oscar Wao
All about Skin features twenty-seven stories by women writers of color whose
short fiction has earned them a range of honors, including John Simon Guggenheim
Fellowships, the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, the
Flannery O’Connor Award, and inclusion in the Best American Short Stories and
O. Henry anthologies. The prose in this multicultural anthology addresses such
themes as racial prejudice, media portrayal of beauty, and family relationships
and spans genres from the comic and the surreal to startling realism. It demonstrates
the power and range of some of the most exciting women writing short
fiction today.
The stories are by American writers Aracelis González Asendorf, Jacqueline
Bishop, Glendaliz Camacho, Learkana Chong, Jennine Capó Crucet, Ramola D.,
Patricia Engel, Amina Gautier, Manjula Menon, ZZ Packer, Princess Joy L. Perry,
Toni Margarita Plummer, Emily Raboteau, Ivelisse Rodriguez, Metta Sáma, Joshunda
Sanders, Renee Simms, Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, Hope Wabuke, and Ashley
Young; Nigerian writers Unoma Azuah and Chinelo Okparanta; and Chinese
writer Xu Xi.
Jina Ortiz is a writer and poet whose works have appeared in many publications,
including the Afro-Hispanic Review, Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices,
and New Millennium Writings. She lives in Worcester, Massachusetts, where she is
an adjunct professor of English at Quinsigamond Community College. |
| |
Rochelle
Spencer is a writer who has contributed to many publications, including Callaloo,
African American Review, Poets & Writers, Publishers Weekly, and Mosaic.
She is completing a doctorate focusing on Afrofuturism and is on the Board of
Directors for the Hurston-Wright Foundation. |
Praise
“A wonderfully written collection of short stories. . . . Each author is a female, award-winning writer who is either African, African American, Asian, Asian American, Native American, Latina, or Caribbean. . . . Each story offers a view of the world that will make you think about your own life and experiences, as well as a culture you may not know much about.”
—Champaign (IL) News-Gazette
“In this intriguing collection of 27 short stories, editors Ortiz & Spencer demonstrate how widely women writers of color range, with stories spanning mother-daughter relationships; forgiveness; the difficulty of being young, insecure, and in an interracial relationship; and issues of nationality.”
—Library Journal
“Demonstrating the exciting talent emerging from the fringes, this multicultural anthology addresses themes such as racial prejudice, media portrayals of beauty and family relationships.”
—Anita Little, Ms. Magazine
“Each candid, creative writer . . . sets taut dramas in motion in which archetypal human pursuits are cruelly and absurdly complicated by gender and race, adding up to a provocative and commanding collection.”
—Donna Seaman, Booklist
“All about Skin takes us above and
below the skin of fascinating characters from the inner cities, immigrant enclaves, and academia of the United States, and from Africa to Asia, among many settings.”
—María Acosta Cruz, author of Dream Nation: Puerto Rican Culture and the Fictions of Independence
“There is no other short story collection even similar to All about Skin; it takes
an entirely different approach in that all of the contributors are literary-award-winning
African, African American, Asian, Asian American, Native American,
Latina, and Caribbean women writers.”
—Sandra Y. Govan, University of North Carolina–Charlotte
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Of Related Interest
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African Women Writing Resistance
An Anthology of Contemporary
Voices
Edited by Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez,
Pauline Dongala, Omotayo Jolaosho, and
Anne Serafin |
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