The many facets of black family life have not always been fully visible in American literature. Black families have often been portrayed as chaotic, fractured, and emotionally devastated, and historians and sociologists are just beginning to acknowledge the resilience and strength of African American families through centuries of hardship. In Mending the World, a host of beloved writers celebrate the richness of black family life, revealing how deep, complicated, and joyous modern kinship can be.From James McBride's tender recollection of the man who claimed eight stepchildren as his own to Toi Derricotte's moving portrait of a pregnant teenager who decides to keep her child; from Debra Dickerson's lament over the shooting that crippled her nephew to Charles Johnson's whimsical look at a married couple's mid-life crisis; from Shay Youngblood's moving fictional evocation of a lost mother to poet Kendel Hippolyte's poignant telling of a father's unexpected legacy, this inspiring volume presents-through fiction, memoir, and poetry-a multi-layered and optimistic portrait of today's black America.Mending the World features fiction, personal memoir, and poetry by new writers (some publishing here for the first time) and established members of the canon. This collection of fiction and nonfiction selections is meant to counterbalance images of black families as troubled harbors of all manner of social ills. The families featured here are celebrated for their love, faith, perseverance, and incredible resilience in the face of hardships from slavery and racism to more typical maladies that befall family life. The book is organized into five sections: childhood recollections, connections between elders and self-identity, outsider's perceptions, family wounds, and preserving kinship bonds. The collection includes an excerpt from Jamaica Kincaid's novel Annie John, Tina McElroy Ansa's story of a young girl with special gift who is empowered by the ghost of a slave woman, and Fred D'Aguiar's tale of a young man obsessed with constructing an image of the father he never knew from recollections of his parents' courtship. Also among the contributors are Edwidge Danticat, Rosemarie Robotham, Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, and James McBride. Readers interested in black literature and the sociology of the black family will appreciate this collection. Vanessa Bush Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Rosemarie Robotham is the senior Editor-at-Large of Essence magazine. She is the co-author of Spirits of the Passage: The Transatlantic Slave Trade in the Seventeenth Century , the editor of the anthology The Bluelight Corner , and the author of a novel, Zachary's Wings . She lives in New York City.