Trudier Harris will tell you that African Americans who consider themselves Southern are about as rare as summer snow. But Harris has always embraced the South, and in Summer Snow she explores her experience as a black Southerner and how it has shaped her into the writer and intellectual she has become.
Something between a nostalgic, inward-looking memoir and a collection of provocative, outward-looking essays on race, class, geography and gender. –Paul Schnieder, O Magazine
Harris thoughtfully weaves patches of personal history with discourses on topics so fundamental to her growth … You will be constantly amused by Harris’s descriptive language. –Herb Boyd, Black Issues Book Review
Like Zora Neale Hurston, another great daughter of the South, Harris lets her vision be tempered by her love. And make no mistake, the South of Black Americans is a love story. Summer Snow reminds us of that … causes us to remember that … lets us celebrate that. –Nikki Giovanni
Trudier Harris grew up in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She is the author of numerous books, including From Mammies to Militants: Domestics in Black American Literature; Saints, Sinners, Saviors: Strong Black Women in African American Literature; and Fiction and Folklore: The Novels of Toni Morrison. She is also coeditor of a number of anthologies, including The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. She is currently the J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of English at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.