LibGuides: African American Women Writers: Dori Sanders

Dori Sanders and her seven older siblings and two younger siblings were raised on their family's farm, but only Dori and her brother Orestus stayed on the farm, where they sold their produce at the roadside Sanders's Peach Shed. During the winter, she sometimes worked at a banquet hall. In 1982 or so, while on a break, Dori's banquet-hall manager read what she wrote and encouraged her to write more. She did just that. Inspired by her observations of two funeral processions, she created a novel imagining the relationship that might arise between a 10-year-old African-American girl and her European-American stepmother, if the father and husband who united them died within hours of the marriage. In Clover (1990), the two very different people, who scarcely know each other, must work through their grief and share a life.*

Genre: Mainstream fiction

More about Dori Sanders at ProQuest One Literature

*Sanders, Dori. In S. D. Hatch (Ed.), Encyclopedia of African-American writing: five centuries of contribution : trials & triumphs of writers, poets, publications and organizations (3rd ed.). Grey House Publishing. Credo Reference.

By Dori Sanders

Clover: a novel by Dori Sanders
Clover is a 10-year old black girl from a small town in South Carolina, whose life changes forever when her father dies and she is forced to forge a new r
Dori Sanders' Country Cooking: recipes and stories from the family farm stand by Dori Sanders
Visits from Aunt Vestula -- A corn-shucking supper -- Starlight and copper -- Hog-killing time -- Making molasses -- Picking peaches -- Wild spring greens -- The farm stand recipe swap -- Wild honey in springtime -- The big eat -- Box suppers -- Silver teas -- Miss Hattie's hurricane survival fireplace dinner -- Family reunions -- Cooking for northerners -- Unexpected company -- Curing sweet potatoes.
Her Own Place by Dori Sanders
Dori Sanders tells a story about ordinary people taking part in a transformation of heart and mind--in the South, in the nation.

About Dori Sanders

A Southern Weave of Women: fiction of the contemporary South by Linda Tate
Since 1980 the South has experienced a tremendous resurgence in fiction by women-black and white, rich and poor, from the Deep South and from Appalachia. This revival marks a critical stage in the development of southern literature, for it offers a revisionary, multicultural, feminist, yet still traditionally southern perspective. Linda Tate considers the ways in which the women writers of the present generation reflect, expand, transform, and redefine long-standing notions of regional culture and womanhood. Focusing on women who suggest the regional, class, and ethnic diversity of contemporary southern writing, Tate discusses such writers as Jill McCorkle, Shay Youngblood, Ellen Douglas, Dori Sanders, Rita Mae Brown, Lee Smith, Alice Walker, Bobbie Ann Mason, Linda Beatrice Brown, and Kaye Gibbons.
Southern Writers Bear Witness: interviews by Jan Nordby Gretlund
Fourteen Southern storytellers reveal their influences, methods and daily routines, and struggles with the writing process.