In the exceptionally long artistic tradition of writers of short stories, I am proud to announce that JAED Publications has released a new anthology, titled, Black is the Color of Love: Eight Outstanding Short Stories of Generational Love. This anthology is a continuation of the history of Black writers creating stories reflecting on the culture and heritage of the Black race in this country. From Charles Chestnutt at the turn of the Twentieth Century through the Renaissance writers—Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Dorothy West, and Claude McKay—Blacks have specialized in the art of writing short stories.

The theme for these stories is the generational love that has kept the race strong and enduring over the centuries. The seven writers, Caleb Alexander, Lenton Collins, D. L. Grant, Leslie Perry (now deceased and the anthology is dedicated to his memory as a great storyteller), Margaret Richardson, Michael Smith, and Antoinette Winstead shared my vision that we must begin to define BLACK from our perspective which is love.

The late great writer Manning Marable created the construct by which we wrote these short stories. Marable wrote: “Throughout the entire history as a people, African Americans have created themselves. They did so in the context of the transatlantic slave trade and two and a half centuries of chattel slavery—a structure of overwhelming inequality and brutality…They constructed their cultural identity and notions of humanity in a country that denied them citizenship and basic human dignity for hundreds of years…However, within several generations, they found their voice of meaning and consciousness as a special people.” The strength of that consciousness is love. Through love, We endure.

In her Foreword to this anthology, the distinguished and accomplished scholar Dr. Camille Cosby wrote, “I love the thread of commonalities within the anthology; that is, the sociological, historical truths about African Americans…and the importance to know those truths. Moreover, to have unity with loved ones, that is essential to healthily navigate America’s relentless institutional and personal actions of vicious hatefulness against African American. Quoting from the eminent historian John Henrick Clarke, Dr. Cosby continued, ‘The cruelest thing slavery and colonialism did to the Africans was to destroy the memory of what they were before foreign contact.’  “Each author of the short stories,” Dr. Cosby concludes, “has countered that ancient and ongoing abuse so astutely in this anthology.”

These eight short stories should be a part of every Black family’s library of cultural books who believe in that generational love as written by the writers of this anthology. If you believe that “through love, we endure,” then I encourage you to purchase Black is the Color of Love, by going to JAED Publications and purchasing it directly from the publisher, or on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.