Korb has a master's degree in English literature and creative writing and has written for a wide variety of educational publishers. In the following essay, she discusses Roselily's impending entrapment through marriage, and its relationship to the epigraphs that open the collection.

Two epigraphs drawing from vastly different cultures and time periods introduce Alice Walker's 1967 collection of short stories, In Love and Trouble. These epigraphs provide a subtle commentary on the stories to come, particularly "Roselily," the story that opens the volume, which traces the dreamlike state of a poor southern African-American woman on the verge of making her marriage vows to a Black Muslim who will take her and her children to a new life in Chicago.

The first epigraph is excerpted from The Concubine, a novel published in 1966 by noted Nigerian author Elechi Amadi. Amadi writes of the young Ahurole, who has over the past...