Life Notes: Personal Writings by Contemporary Black Women
Subtitle: Personal Writings by Contemporary Black Women
Edition: First edition later printing
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company
Published: 1994
Place of publication: United States of America
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 430
Copyright date: 1994
First sentence: Though I have written personal notes for years, this journal entry was not done freely.
Description: Life Notes is the first collection devoted exclusively to writings from the journals, diaries, and personal notebooks of contemporary Black women by the author of the best-selling Double Stitch: Black Women Write About Mothers and Daughters. In her foreword to this volume Marcia Ann Gillespie writes, "Keeping a journal is an extraordinarily intimate activity, sharing what we write is to allow another to peer through a delicate window where we stand without covers.".

In this beautiful collection of intensely personal testimonies, 50 courageous writers illuminate the complexities of Black women's lives, offering unique reflections about self, family, intimacy, work, politics, life transitions, violation, and recovery. Among the contributors are well-known writers as well as emerging and previously unpublished writers.

A diverse group, they are native daughters from three continents and the Caribbean, the youngest an eight-year-old Nigerian girl and the oldest a sixty-five-year-old retired African American telephone operator.