From The Color Purple, by Alice Walker [1982] (p. 3)

Dear God,
My mama dead. She die screaming and cussing. She scream at me. She cuss at me. I'm big. I can't move fast enough. By time I git back from the well, the water be warm. By time I git the tray ready the food be cold. By time I git all the children ready for school it be dinner time. He don't say nothing. He set there by the bed holding her hand and cryin, talking bout don't leave me, don't go.

She ast me bout the first one. Whose it is? I say God's. I don't know no other man or what else to say. When I start to hurt and then my stomach start moving and then that little baby come out my pussy chewing on it fist you could have knock me over with a feather.

Don't nobody come see us.
She got sicker and sicker.
Finally she ask Where it is?
I say God took it.
He took it. He took it while I was sleeping. Kilt it out there in the woods.
Kill this one too, if he can.

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From Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood [1976]), by James Baldwin

(See also the excerpt from Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone [1968])

This street long. It real long. It a little like the street in the movies or the TV when the cop cars come from that end of the street and then they come from the other end of the street and the man they come to get he in one of the houses or he on the fire-escape or he on the roof and he see they come for him and he see the cop cars at that end and he see the cop cars at the other end. And then he don't know what to do. He can't go nowhere. And he sweating. And the cops come out their cars and they got their guns and they start coming down the street. Some of them come from that end and some of them come from the other end. They don't know exactly where the man is, but they know he somewhere in this street.

TJ live almost smack in the middle of the block. If they come down from that end, the way he facing now, well then, the man might be in Walter's Bar and Grill on this side of the street or he might be in the tailor shop on the other side of the street. If he ain't in neither of them places, and the cops keep coming real slow and careful down this long street with their guns out, then he might be in the record store on this side of the street or he might be in the house on that side of the street. ...

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From Sweet Potato Pie [1992], by Gloria Naylor

An Extract From Bailey's Cafe
(Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers, New York, pp. 123-124)

Weren't nothing secret about my marriage [to X King, her new husband]. I got him the same way I kept him — with the best poon tang east of the Mississippi. And just cause it was 1924, don't let people tell you that nice girls didn't. They did then, they do now — and I'll bet my grandma's drawers they always will. But it's the smart girls — nice or not — who understand that men have a short memory in that department. So you gotta find ways of reminding 'em of how good it was while promising them it's gonna get better still. And the hardest part is to remind them without saying a word. If you spoke about such things out loud, you would be indecent. You see, the real secret is that men don't give a second thought about marrying girls that do as long as they stay ladies . . .

My biggest problem [with her husband] was at the dinner table. A new bride, mind you, so I'm putting on the hog. Frying catfish. Washing and chopping collard greens. Baking biscuits. Smothering pork chops till they cried for mercy. Macaroni salad with homemade mayonnaise. And he'd just pick and pick at his food. He'd be smiling all the while, but I could see he was having a hard time swallowing. Now, if I knew anything, I knew how to cook. So I'm trying to figure out what it is until one night I set a platter of buttered cornbread and a steaming bowl of oxtail soup in front of him. He plays around in the soup with a spoon for a while, brings up the oxtail, and asks me timid-like, Wife, what kind of meat is this? I coulda fell off my chair. A colored man, brought up in Harlem, who didn't know what oxtail soup was? Then it all comes out. Uncle Eli never let the Kings eat like that. He called it slave food — that old Tom. Well, Mother, I saw the sorry mess I had on my hands. So I began his education right quick.

The next night I baked three sweet-potato pies. I mean, the heavy kind with lard in the crust and Alaga syrup bubbling all through them. And while my pies are cooling and he's in the bedroom reading his newspaper, I run me a warm bath and throw a whole bottle of vanilla extract in the water. So I'm soaking in the vanilla, the pies are cooling, and we're all ready about the same time. I go into our bedroom, carrying one of my pies, dressed the same way I stepped out of that tub. I made sure it was sliced real nice — six even pieces. And he's looking at me like I've gone out of my mind, but I still take it all real slow. I laid back on the pillows. Took out a slice, without disturbing a crumb, mind you. And wedged it right between my legs. It was time for the first lesson. Husband, I said, pointing, this is sweet-potato pie. Didn't have a bit of trouble after that. Except it was all the man wanted for dinner for the next month.

NB: These extracts support particular points of the US-1 class presentation; they are not intended to represent Black American literature generally.