In this compelling intersection of genealogy, memoir, and Reconstruction history, Davis picks up where her grandmother left off. When Davis's grandmother died in 1971, she was writing a novel about her parents, Mississippi cotton farmers who met after the Civil War: Chloe Curry, a former slave from Alabama, married with several children, and Will Campbell, a white planter from Missouri who had never married. Starting with a photograph and some writings left by her grandmother, Thulani Davis goes looking for the 'white folk' in her family and uncovers a history far richer and stranger than she had ever imagined. Hatch (Ed.), Encyclopedia of African-American writing: five centuries of contribution : trials & triumphs of writers, poets, publications and organizations (3rd ed.).

Genre: Family and Relationships History writing Life stories Psychological fiction More about Thulani Davis at ProQuest One Literature She also wrote two novels: 1959 (1992), about a pubescent girl's experiences in the civil-rights-era South and 1997 American Book Award-winning Maker of Saints (1996), a contemporary murder mystery in Manhattan.* Davis's book-length published works include her poetry collections All the Renegade Ghosts Rise (1978) and Playing the Changes (1985) the text accompanying a photograph book, Malcolm X: The Great Photographs (1995, photos by Howard Chapnick) and her memoir, My Confederate Kinfolk: A Twenty-First Century Freedwoman Confronts Her Roots (2006). After reporting for the San Francisco Sun-Reporter in the mid-1970s, Davis started regularly contributing essays, articles, interviews, and reviews to New York City's Village Voice, as well as other periodicals. Thulani Davis (1948-2018) is a Virginia native, a graduate of Barnard College, and an ordained Buddhist priest.

Malcolm X by Thulani Davis