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Acknowledgments I could not have written this book without the support ofmy family , friends, and colleagues. This project has been a long time coming, and I would not have been able to realize my ideas without the guidance and inspiration ofmany people. My first thanks go to the book's initial readers, Mitchell Breitwieser, Katherine Bassard, and VeVe Clark. Their support extended beyond offering constructive criticism on the project to including words of advice , encouragement, and advocacy. Barbara Christian and VeVe Clark were models of rigorous and humanist engagement with black literature; they made their imprint on me as a young scholar, and I hope their spirits live in these pages. I am also especially grateful to friends and colleagues from the University of California, Berkeley, who formed my first intellectual community: Theresa Tensuan, Cynthia Dobbs, Anne Marie Harvey, Juana Rodriguez, Stafford Gregoire, Linda Chandler, Valorie Thomas, Donna Weir, Cynthia Liu, and Harry Lin. Many of them read the earliest versions ofthis manuscript and offered incisive criticism and encouragement when I most needed it. They all offered friendship and humor and reminded me to center myself through fellowship with others. My sincere thanks also to Abena Busia, Wesley Brown, and Brent Edwards , who read and commented on my work and offered insight and support at critical moments. I am especially indebted to Cheryl Wall, whose questions were pointed, whose suggestions were generous, and whose work on women of the Harlem Renaissance has been a model of clarity, insight, and precision. I owe a special debt to Herman Bennett, Jennifer Morgan, and Vilna Bashi Treitler for the wisdom and guidance they provided while we all worked to balance the demands of careers in academia and family life. They in their various ways helped me to become a better scholar and mother and to see that these two roles need not compete with or contradict each other. My gratitude also to the English Department Working Group at Rutgers, a community of junior scholars who came together regularly to read and critique each other's work. The group offered a venue for receiving careful and generous readings from colleagues. Chris Chism, Mary Pauline Sheridan- 232 Acknowledgments Rabideau, Edlie Wong, and Stacey Klein provided emotional support, as well as intellectual engagement, and for that I am especially grateful. At Smith College, I have found my second intellectual home, and I am fortunate to benefit from the collegiality of Pau1a Giddings, Kevin Quashie, Louis Wilson, Katwiwa Mu1e, and Anne Ferguson. I share works in progress with a group of brilliant feminist scholars: Jennifer Guglielmo, Ginetta Candelario , Elisabeth Armstrong, Michelle Joffroy, and Adriane Lenz-Smith. They challenge and inspire me and nurture both body and mind. The intelligence and wit of Danielle Elliott and Christina Greer got me through the longest days as the book neared completion. Ayoka Stewart proved invaluable as my research assistant, and Astride Charles's skills as a researcher cannot be rivaled. I also thank Farah Griffin, Valerie Smith, Lee D. Baker, and Joan Dayan for their support of my work. I learned an enormous amount from their scholarship and owe them a debt of gratitude for their generous and constructive criticism of the manuscript. At Rutgers University, I shared drafts of chapters with the Institute for Research on Women's Faculty Fellows Seminar and with the Center for Historical Analysis's Black Atlantic Seminar. A Mabelle McLeod Lewis Fellowship supported me during the 1995-96 academic year at the University of California, Berkeley. The Department of Afro-American Studies at Smith College granted me resources and leave time to complete the book. I also want to extend my gratitude to Johns Hopkins University Press for permission to use in Chapter 8 material that had originally been published in the journal Callaloo: A Journal ofAfrican and African American Literature. I benefited from the expert guidance and scrupu1ous work of the University of Pennsylvania Press and my editors, Jerome Singermans and Erica Ginsburg. I appreciated and found quite helpful the comments of two anonymous readers. It is a better book as a resu1t of their having read and responded to it in its earlier stages. Finally, I could not have completed this work without the support ofmy family. They always remind me to keep my priorities straight and to remember that communion with loved ones is a fundamental human need. They have kept me grounded and made me laugh when I took myself too seriously. They are my haven. I am permanently indebted...

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