Jubilee
by Margaret Walker | 
The Price of a Child
by Lorene Cary | 
Walk Through Darkness
by David Anthony Durham |
The Revisioners
by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton | 
Mandingo
by Kyle Onstott |
Douglass' Women
by Jewell Parker Rhodes |
Third Girl from the Left
by Martha Southgate | 
Middle Passage
by Charles Johnson | 
My Jim
by Nancy Rawles | 
Corregidora
by Gayl Jones | 
They Tell Me of a Home
by Daniel Black | 
Song Yet Sung
by James McBride | 
Liliane
by Ntozake Shange | 
A Million Nightingales
by Susan Straight |
Your Blues Ain't Like Mine
by Bebe Moore Campbell | 
The Darkest Child
by Delores Phillips | 
Standing at the Scratch Line
by Guy Johnson | 
A Mercy
by Toni Morrison | 
The Healing
by Jonathan Odell | 
The Secrets of Mary Bowser
by Lois Leveen |
Even though Annie Coats and her son have managed to buy their freedom, their lives are still marked by constant struggle and sacrifice. Washington's Georgetown neighbourhood is supposed to be a 'promised land' for former slaves but is effectively a frontier town, gritty and dangerous, with no laws protecting black people.