This book is written by teachers interested in bringing African American literature into the classroom. Documented here is the learning process that these educators experienced themselves as they read and discussed the stories & pedagogical.

Introduction: Maryemma Graham -- When Teaching MattersChapter 1. William L. Andews -- Narrating SlaveryChapter 2. Katharine Driscoll Coon -- A Rip in the Tent: Teaching (African) American LiteratureChapter 3. Jane Skelton -- Multiple Voices, Multiple Identities: Teaching African American LiteratureChapter 4. Leslie Catherine Sanders --Little Ham's Self-Invention: Teaching Langston HughesChapter 5. Constance Borab -- Freeing the Female Voice: New Models and Materials for TeachingChapter 6. Thadious M. Davis -- A Female Face: Or, Masking the Masculine in African American Fiction Before Richard WrightChapter 7. Bernard W. Bell -- Voices of Double Consciousness in African American Fiction: Charles Chesnutt, Zora Neale Hurston, Dorothy West and Richard WrightChapter 8. Jerry W. Ward -- To Shatter Innocence: Teaching African American PoetryChapter 9. Elizabeth Swanson Goldberg --The Way We Do the Things We Do: Enunciation and Effect in the Multicultural Classroom Chapter 10. Marianna White Davis -- Teaching Against the Odds Chapter 11. Ann Louise Keating -- Interrogating Whiteness, (De)Constructing Race Chapter 12. Trudier Harris -- Lying Through Our Teeth? The Quagmire of Cultural Diversity Chapter 13. Sharon Pineault-Burke and Jennifer Novak -- Selected Bibliography of African American Literature