"I will always write about Black people and our efforts to build a community where we can live safely. . . . These will always be my themes, regardless of the forum," claimed Pearl Cleage in a 4 February 1998 Washington Informer interview. Throughout Cleage's career, the Atlanta-based playwright, journalist, poet, and novelist has used the written word to explore blacks' experiences on the American landscape. Self-described as a third-generation black nationalist feminist, Cleage uses her writing to examine the relationships and the impacts of racism and sexism.

Pearl Cleage was born in Springfield, Massachusetts on 7 December 1948, but she was raised in Detroit, Michigan. Her father, the Reverend Albert B. Cleage Jr. (also known as Jaramogi Abebe Agyman), was founder and leader of the Shrine of the Black Madonna; her mother, Doris Graham Cleage, was a schoolteacher. Her stepfather, Henry W. Cleage, was a lawyer and philosopher. In her father's Detroit congregation, Cleage...