... slender but potent.

By using an iconic American author as the anchor of her narrative, Clifton includes her own family’s history in the American canon.

Prize, the judges wrote that 'One always feels the looming humaneness around Lucille Clifton’s poems—it is a moral quality that some poets have and some don’t.' In Generations, readers will see that her prose—economical, matter-of-fact, and indelible—has that quality as well..

Clifton (1936–2010) distills centuries of family history with the same potent, easy eloquence that has placed her among the first rank of American poets.

You can easily see the reflection of her tight, spare poetry in this exceedingly compact book, which is all the more affecting for its light touch and suggestive sketches of all the American Sayles, including a few of the white ones. ''Slavery was terrible,'' says her Daddy, ''but we fooled them old people. We come out of it better than they did.'' Here's the proof..