Wall, Cheryl A. Worrying the Line: Black Women Writers, Lineage, and Literary Tradition. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. 328 pp.

by Linda Watts

Cheryl Wall has established a strong profile within higher education and literary scholarship, particularly in terms of her studies of Black women writers in the United States. Wall has published several well-regarded critical editions and original works highlighting the contributions of women writers associated with the Harlem Renaissance. I first became acquainted with Wall's research through her highly influential 1990 anthology, Changing Our Own Words: Essays on Criticism, Theory, and Writings by Black Women. This collection featured essays written by many of the most distinguished scholars in the field: Abena Busia, Barbara Christian, Mae Henderson, Gloria Hull, Deborah McDowell, Hortense Spillers, Claudia Tate, and Susan Willis. With her latest book, Worrying the Line: Black Women Writers, Lineage, and Literary Tradition, Wall offers a single-author volume of essays dealing with writers including Lucille Clifton, Gayl Jones, Audre Lorde, Paule Marshall, Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, and Alice Walker. Her premise is at once concise and profound: "One cannot embrace the future until one has confronted the past" (115).