In 1969, Langston Hughes edited The Best Short Stories by Black Writers, the classic compendium of African-American short fiction from 1899 to 1967. A quarter of a century later, Gloria Naylor compiled an encore volume, Children of the Night, gathering together the most gifted black writers of the later twentieth century -- from 1967 to its publication in 1997 -- in a rich and varied collection of stories.

The portrait that emerges of the African-American experience in the post-Civil Rights era is stirring, compelling, sometimes disturbing, and certainly provocative. Arranged in in four thematic section -- "Remembering," "Affirming," "Revealing the Self Divided," and "Moving On" -- the thirty-seven stories included brilliantly capture the many facets of the black experience in America.