Asha Kanwar is an Indian woman who lives in New Delhi where she teaches English at the Indira Gandhi National Open University. Asha received a Fulbright fellowship in 1992 for research on fiction by African-American women writers at Iowa State University. Asha is the author of The Novels of Virgina Woolf and Anite Desai and Fictional Theories and Three Great Novels. She plans to translate stories from The Unforgetting Heart into Hindi, so that readers in India, especially Dalits, will have access to the expressions of a people whose resistance is similar to their own. |
The Unforgetting Heart An Anthology of Short Stories by African American Women (1859-1993) Asha Kanwar, editor This collection of brings together an unprecedented range of beautifully crafted short stories by women that span a century and a half of African American literary tradition. Editor Asha Kanwar's introduction provides the historical background and context for the selection of stories by authors as varied as Alice Dunbar Nelson, Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Cade Bambara, and Wanda Coleman. The writers included here, both the famous and the less well-known, together represent the remarkable diversity of African American women's writing across class, culture and time.
“The Unforgetting Heart: What an appropriate title! What a stunning collection! These unforgettable stories—from laundry room to ballroom, from Brooklyn to Barbados, from colored folks to African Americans—will sweep into your life with all the variety, verve, intellect and heart of the women who produced them.” —Tina McElroy Ansa, author of Baby of the Family and Ugly Ways “The Unforgetting Heart... will make you laugh, bring tears to your eyes and touch the very depths of your souls. Most of all, The Unforgetting Heart will capture yours.” —Johnetta B. Cole, President, Spelman College “Often touted as great oral storytellers, African American women have nonetheless been ignored as short story writers. The Unforgetting Heart is a lively historical sampling that will challenge readers, teachers and scholarly views of African American women’s contributions to cultural/literary history.” —Barbara Christian, author of Black Feminist Criticism and Black Women Novelists, Professor of African American Studies, UC Berkeley “This anthology will be a rewarding addition for women’s studies collections, as a resource for new discoveries and old favorites.”
—Booklist “Asha Kanwar has collected some of the best Black female writers of all time, adding to that voices buried under years of neglect. All of them shimmer with a new radiance, and an immediate intimacy…a rare jewel. Its time has come indeed.” —Seattle Gay News
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