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OTHER PEOPLE’S SKIN

“FICTION WITH A MISSION”

Acknowledging, Understanding, and Healing the Skin/Hair “Thang” Between Black Women

Introducing the Sister4Sister Empowerment Series!

Good hair, bad hair, redbone, high-yellow, dusty-brown, midnight blue--all are loaded terms that have been used by and about African-Americans to describe the texture of our hair and our various shades of blackness. These centuries-old negative descriptions still evoke the pain and division of a post-slavery caste system within our community that continues to wound and separate members of our village based upon physical characteristics that should be celebrated and embraced instead of denigrated and rejected.

Well not anymore. The Sister4Sister Empowerment Series published by Atria Books/Simon & Schuster, has arrived to promote healing and self-love amongst black women of all shades. Through high-quality, issue related fiction, Sister4Sister’s anthologies will stimulate dialogue and introspection, which can lead to individual and collective healing.

The first volume in the series to be released in October 2007 is Other People’s Skin: Four Novellas, which explores colorism in the black community and invites the reader to explore one of our best kept secrets--differences and discrimination based upon skin color doesn’t just happen between the races, they happen within the races as well. The four novellas of Other People’s Skin help to acknowledge, examine, and heal the skin/hair “thang” between black women and to promote a sense of self-love and cultural pride in people of the African Diaspora.

“Now, more than ever, black women of the world must embrace their God-given beauty and celebrate their inherent blackness in all its blessed glory! Through the gift of literary fiction our stories have the power to heal the wounds of our traumatic past, and we must teach our young black boys and girls that in the words of the late, great Ossie Davis, ‘A Negro kingdom is as vast as any other!’ Truly, truly, truly, black, in all its wondrous shades and skin tones, is beautiful!”

–Tracy Price-Thompson, founder, S2S Empower Ourselves, co-editor, Other People’s Skin.

The contributors to Other People’s Skin are accomplished African-American writers and journalists who represent the full continuum of the color spectrum. They bring their own life experiences with colorism and skin/hair biases to bear upon their tales of hope, resilience and understanding.

They are:

Tracy Price-Thompson, a retired Army engineer officer and Desert Storm veteran who graduated from the Army's Infantry Officer Candidate School after more than ten years as an enlisted soldier. She is a Hurston/Wright award winner for contemporary fiction and national bestselling author of Black Coffee, Chocolate Sangria, A Woman’s Worth, Knockin Boots, and Gather Together in My Name, co-editor of Proverbs for the People: Contemporary African-American Literature, and contributor to Chicken Soup for the African-American Soul and Children of the Dream: Our Stories of Growing Up Black in America. A Brooklyn, New York native, Tracy is a Ralph Bunche graduate fellow who holds a bachelor's degree in business administration and a master’s degree in social work. She lives in Hawaii with her husband and several of their six intelligent and incredibly beautiful black children.

TaRessa Stovall is an author, journalist, media producer, professor, and communications consultant. The Seattle native is the author of The Hot Spot: A novel, co-editor of Proverbs for the People: Contemporary African-American Literature, with Tracy Price-Thompson; co-author of A Love Supreme: Real-Life Stories of Black Love; and author of The Buffalo Soldiers, a history book for young people. TaRessa was also featured in the Emmy Award-winning documentary, "Black Women On: The Light/Dark Thang," an independently produced film which has aired on PBS stations nationwide. TaRessa lives with her family in Montclair, New Jersey.

Desiree Cooper is the co-host for public radio's Weekend America, a frequent commentator for National Public Radio's All Things Considered, and a columnist for the Detroit Free Press. A University of Virginia law school graduate, she has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize twice for her coverage of an 11-year-old African American boy who was tried in Michigan as an adult for murder. She has won prizes for her columns, poetry and fiction, including short story awards from Writer's Digest and Ebony. Born in Japan, she has roots in Virginia and Michigan.

Elizabeth Atkins is a Diversity Speaker and the bestselling author of five novels with mixed-race characters: White Chocolate (featured on Montel), Dark Secret, Twilight (with Billy Dee Williams), and two hip-hop novels for Urban Books that were in Black Expressions Book Club. After attending Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, Elizabeth was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for articles on race at The Detroit News. She also celebrated a 100-pound weight loss on Oprah.