Julia Peterkin pioneered in demonstrating the literary potential for serious depictions of the African American experience. Rejecting the prevailing sentimental stereotypes of her times, she portrayed her black characters with sympathy and understanding, endowing them with the full dimensions of human consciousness. In these novels and stories, she tapped the richness of rural southern black culture and oral traditions to capture the conflicting realities in an African American community and to reveal a grace and courage worthy of black pride. "She is a Southern white woman, but she has the eye and the ear to see beauty and know truth". -- W.E.B. Du Bois "Nothing so stark, taut, and poignant has come out of the South in fifty years". -- Joel Spingarn "Black April's vigorous simplicity makes it deserving of a place among the world's best folk-tales". -- The Nation "Bright Skin is an attractively written story...sympathetic and unsensational in style". -- The Times Literary Supplement "Peterkin has shown herself in Green Thursday as a literary artist. ...Into the mold of the graceful form she has chosen she pours the distillation of a rich, human observation of the secret life of a people who have not yet been understood". -- The New York Times "As a portrayer of both grief and broad comedy, it seems to me that Peterkin is at the present time unsurpassed by any writer in America". -- New York Herald Tribune