Childress was a much performed playwright - her dialogue very involving and precise in its reflection of Afro-American voices -- rural poor, urban, rising middle class, the educated. Afterword writer La Vinia Jennings is author of the biography of Alice Childress published by Twayne Publishers. She is professor of American Literature at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Childress received an Obie Award for best original off-Broadway play. Other Childress plays ran on Public Television and at Joseph Papp's Public Theatre. New World Pictures adapted her play, "A Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich" into a nationally released film. "Alice Childress brings to her story the rich proverbs and dialect of the Carolina lowlands, and this, her eighth novel, is a stately achievement." -The New York Times Book Review Sweeping epic that captures the movement of black America from the rural south to the urban north.

Said G.L. Wilson in Freedomways: "We see reflected those legions of black folk who made the journey. a veritable celebration of the black community's use of language.".