Skin Deep

Candid, poignant, provocative, and informative, the essays and stories in Skin Deep explore a wide spectrum of racial issues between black and white women, from self-identity and competition to childrearing and friendship. Eudora Welty contributes a bittersweet story of a one-hundred-year-old black woman whose spirit is as determined and strong as anything in nature. Bestselling author Naomi Wolf recalls her first exposure to racism growing up, examining the subtle forms it can take even among well-meaning people; bell hooks writes about the intersection between black women and feminist politics; and Joyce Carol Oates includes a one-act play in which racial stereotypes are reversed. Among the other writers featured in the collection are Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Susan Straight, Mary Morris, and Beverly Lowry. A groundbreaking anthology that reveals surprising insights and hidden truths to a subject too often clouded by misperceptions and easy assumptions,  Skin Deep is a major contribution to understanding our culture.Introduction
Marita Golden

Introduction
Susan Richards Shreve

High Yellow White Trash
Lisa Page

whitegirls
Marita Golden

The Racism of Well-Meaning White People
Naomi Wolf

Overhand and Underhand
Retha Powers

Negative
Joyce Carol Oates

Recitatif
Toni Morrison

What Tina Has to Do with It
Beverly Lowry

Legacies and Ghosts
Patricia Browning Griffith

Adjustments
Mary Morris

Prudential Life Insurance
Susan Richards Shreve

Across the Glittering Sea
Jewelle Gomez

Loving Across tghe Boundary
Ann Filemyr

The Revenge of Hannah Kemhuff
Alice Walker

Tulsa, 1921
Susan Straight

A Worn Path
Eudora Welty

Conents Under Pressure:
White Woman/Black History
Catherine Clinton

Reaching Across the Feminist Radical Divide
Dorothy Gilliam

Feminism in Black and White
bell hooks

Hello, Stranger
Gayle Pemberton

“Are We So Different?”
A Dialogue Between an African-American and a White Social Worker
Cathleen Gray, Ph.D.
Shirley Bryant, D.S.W.

Contributors



"Captures the sound, the shape and the boundaries of contemporary relationships between Black and White women."--Essence magazine

"Eloquent, challenging and sometimes unsettling."--Minneapolis Star TribuneMarita Golden is the author of more than a dozen works of fiction and nonfiction. Her books include After, Migrations of the Heart, Saving Our Sons, and Don’t Play in the Sun. She is the founder of the Hurston/Wright Foundation, an organization that supports African American writers. She lives in Mitchellville, Maryland.

Susan Shreve is the author of several acclaimed books for young adults and children, including three books about Amanda’s younger brother—Joshua T. Bates.