THE SISTERHOOD BY COURTNEY THORSSON

Details

Honorable Mention, 2024 William Sanders Scarborough Prize, Modern Language Association

One Sunday afternoon in February 1977, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Ntozake Shange, and several other Black women writers met at June Jordans Brooklyn apartment to eat gumbo, drink champagne, and talk about their work. Calling themselves The Sisterhood, the groupwhich also came to include Audre Lorde, Paule Marshall, Margo Jefferson, and otherswould get together once a month over the next two years, creating a vital space for Black women to discuss literature and liberation.

The Sisterhoodtells the story of how this remarkable community transformed American writing and cultural institutions. Drawing on original interviews with Sisterhood members as well as correspondence, meeting minutes, and readings of their works, Courtney Thorsson explores the groups everyday collaboration and profound legacy. The Sisterhood advocated for Black women writers at trade publishers and magazines such as Random House,Ms., andEssence, and eventually in academic departments as welloften in the face of sexist, racist, and homophobic backlash. Thorsson traces the personal, professional, and political ties that brought the group together as well as the reasons for its dissolution. She considers the popular and critical success of Sisterhood members in the 1980s, the uneasy absorption of Black feminism into the academy, and how younger writers built on the foundations the group laid. Highlighting the organizing, networking, and community building that nurtured Black womens writing, this book demonstrates that The Sisterhood offers an enduring model for Black feminist collaboration.

HARDBACK BOOK