Home Girls, 40th Anniversary Edition

BARBARA SMITH is an author, activist, and independent scholar who has played a groundbreaking role in opening up a national cultural and political dialogue about the intersections of race, class, sexuality, and gender. She is the co-editor of Conditions: Five, The Black Women's Issue (with Lorraine Bethel); and All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women's Studies (with Akasha (Gloria) Hull and Patricia Bell-Scott). She is the general editor of The Reader's Companion to U.S. Women's History (with Wilma Mankiller, Gwendolyn Mink, Marysa Navarro, and Gloria Steinem), and is the co-author of Yours in Struggle: Three Feminist Perspectives on Anti-Semitism and Racism (with Minnie Bruce Pratt and Elly Bulkin). A collection of her essays, The Truth That Never Hurts: Writings on Race, Gender, and Freedom was published by Rutgers University Press in 1998 and was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award and was a Nonfiction Award finalist for the American Library Association's Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Book Award. Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Forty Years of Movement Building, edited by Alethia Jones and Virginia Eubanks, with Barbara Smith was published in 2014. It won the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir/Biography and the Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction from the Publishing Triangle. Smith was the cofounder and publisher of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, the first U.S. Publisher for women of color until 1995, and served two terms as a member of the Albany Common Council from 2006-2013. In 2005, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Preface to the 40th Anniversary Edition
Preface to the first Rutgers University Press Edition
Introduction
Poem, Akasha (Gloria) Hull

I. The Blood--Yes, the Blood

For a Godchild, Regina, On the Occasion of Her First Love, Toi Derricotte
The Damned, Toi Derricotte
Hester's Song, Toi Derricotte
The Sisters, Alexis De Veaux
Debra, Michelle T. Clinton
If I Could Write This in Fire, I would Write This In Fire, Michelle Cliff
The Blood--Yes, The Blood: A Conversation, Cenen and Barbara Smith
Something Latino Was Up With Us, Spring Redd
"I Used to Think", Chirlane McCray
The Black Back-Ups, Kate Rushin
Home, Barbara Smith

II. Artists Without Art Form
"Under The Days": The buried Life and Poetry of Angelina Weld Grimké, Akasha (Gloria) Hull
The Black Lesbian in American Literature: An Overview, Ann Allen Shockley
Artists Without Art Form, Renita Weems
I've Been Thinking of Diana Sands, Patricia Jones
A Cultural Legacy Denied and Discovered: Black Lesbians in Fiction by Women, Jewelle L. Gomez
What It Is I Think She's Doing Anyhow: A Reading of Toni Cade Bambara's The Salt Eaters, Akasha (Gloria) Hull

III. Black Lesbians--Who Will Fight For Our Lives But Us?
Tar Beach, Audre Lorde
Before I Dress and Soar Again, Donna Allegra
LeRoy's Birthday, Raymina Y. Mays
The Wedding, Barbara Smith
Maria de las Rosas, Becky Birtha
Miss Esther's Land, Barbara A. Banks
The Failure to Transform: Homophobia in the Black Community, Cheryl Clarke
Where Will You Be? Pat Parker

IV. A Home Girls' Album

V. A Hell of a Place to Ferment a Revolution
Among the Things That Used to Be, Willie M. Coleman
From Sea to Shining Sea, June Jordan
Women of Summer, Cheryl Clarke
The TIred Poem: Last Letter from a Typical Unemployed Black Professional Woman, Kate Rushin
Shoes Are Made for Walking, Shirley O. Steele
Billy de Lye, Deirdre McCalla
The Combahee River Collective Statement, Combahee River Collective
Black Macho and Black Feminism, Linda C. Powell
Black Lesbian/Feminist Organizing: A Conversation, Tania Abdulahad, Gwendolyn Rogers, Barbara Smith, Jameelah Waheed
For Strong Women, Michelle T. Clinton
The Black Goddess, Kate Rushin
Women's Spirituality: A Household Act, Luisah Teish
Only Justice Can Stop a Curse, Alice Walker
Coalition Politics: Turning the Century, Bernice Johnson Reagon

Acknowledgments 
Information on Contributors