The Black women’s group that helped launch Toni Morrison, Alice Walker and a new vanguard

Review The Sisterhood: How a Network of Black Women Writers Changed American Culture By Courtney Thorsson Columbia University Press: 296 pages, $29 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores. In the decade that followed, Black women stepped into the spotlight of American fiction with works including Walker’s “The Color Purple,” Morrison’s “Beloved,” Jordan’s “Passion,” Audre Lorde’s “Sister Outsider” and many, many others. Thorsson, however, lays it plain: “This is not a group biography, but I do seek to capture these Black women writers at a pivotal time in their intellectual lives.” Nevertheless, several figures stand out: Morrison, Jordan, Walker, Shange and Lorde. For just one example, she ascribes the motivation behind a 1988 open letter protesting the lack of major accolades for Morrison to a collective decision “that there could only be one highly successful Black writer at the time.” This is a reductive interpretation based on scant evidence, and it contradicts Thorsson’s argument for collective success. “It is my responsibility … to use the privilege of my whiteness, institutional affiliations, and skills as a literary scholar to get as many people as possible to read, reread, and better understand as many books as possible by Black writers.” Her hope is that the book may “help us understand their remarkable achievement, the costs of their work, and the labor that remains to be done.” As a white critic writing about these same Black women, perhaps I too should make clear my limited perspective.