“Sarah Wright’s triumph in this novel is a celebration of life over death. It is, in every respect, an impressive achievement.”—The New York Times, 1969
“Often compared to the work of Zora Neale Hurston, the novel was unusual in its exploration of the black experience from a woman’s perspective, anticipating fiction by writers like Toni Morrison and Alice Walker.”—The New York Times, 2009
Sarah Wright’s searing yet lyrical story of a Southern black woman’s life during the Depression—a period seldom accounted for in African-American literature— is as compelling as her protagonist’s insistence that "this child’s gonna live." In this lost literary masterpiece by a seminal figure in the Black Arts movement, a husband and wife struggle amidst the poverty of Maryland’s Eastern Shore during the 1930s. "Saturated in harsh beauty," declares Tillie Olsen, "this book has been and still is for me one of the most important and indispensable books published in my lifetime."
Sarah E. Wright, novelist and poet, was a former vice president of the Harlem Writers Guild and coauthor of Give Me a Child. She died at age 80 in New York City.
