Ntozake Shange's highly acclaimed plays, poetry, and fiction have established her as a major figure in contemporary American literature. Her latest novel, Liliane: Resurrection of the Daughter, stems partly from her own segregated childhood in St. Louis, partly from the double-edged realization that, in her words, "we knew we came from something, somewhere, and had watched as 'The Other' removed us from ourselves, our lands, our language, and each other, at will or on a whim. Nevertheless . . . the intermingling of people of color on these shores revitalized an African-American community that was numbed by the violence of the sheer task of living here."