SOURCE: A review of Once, in TLS, No, 4437, April 15, 1988, p. 420.

In the following review, Phillips discusses similarities among Walker's Once, Ntozake Shange's Nappy Edges, and Audre Lord's Our Dead Behind Us.

Alice Walker published Once, the first of her four collections of poetry, in 1968, the year Martin Luther King was assassinated. Ntozake Shange's Nappy Edges appeared in 1978, soon after her play, for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf, began to reach audiences across the United States. These older collections are now published in Britain for the first time, as is Audre Lord's ninth and newest volume, Our Dead Behind Us. Together, they demonstrate that while styles in writing may have altered and awareness been enlarged, the issues of social justice and sexual equality remain pretty much the same for “the Poet Who Happens to Be Black and the Black Poet Who Happens to...