Black Girl From Tannery Flats (Ishmael Reed Publishing Company, 2003)

About the Book

Black Girl from Tannery Flats, the first book written by Thelma V. Reed, is an especially important memoir because Thelma V. Reed tells what ordinary black people had to go through in the early part of the twentieth century. Their triumphs and tragedies.

Since it was released by Ishmael Reed Publishing Company in 2003 in both hardcover and paperback editions, Black Girl from Tannery Flats has received important notice and praise, with selections for readings by private book clubs and comments by important scholars and critics of African American literature, history and culture.

Henry Louis Gates, Chair of the Department of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, comments: “Thelma V. Reed has lived through a lot, and we are fortunate that she has chosen to share her stories of pre-Civil Rights Southern girlhood, wartime and post-war work and family life in the North, and her inspiring emotional and spiritual journey in this vivid and gripping memoir…. Black Girl from Tannery Flats will stay with you, whether you are a scholar of twentieth century African American history or a student of life itself.”

Cecil Brown, author of Stagolee Shot Billy (Harvard University Press, 2003) comments: “Thelma V. Reed employs a narrative style that has all but disappeared from African-American literature. This is how it sounded before the arrival of television, when the young people gathered around the Southern fires and listened to their elders tell their histories.”