Raised Not to Hope Too Hard Sherley Anne Williams built her career celebrating the ways black folks talked and acted. School-wise, street-smart, and quick-tongued, she reserved her deepest antipathy for those outside the African-American experience …
Sherley Anne Williams and son Malcolm, c. 1973. Sherley had showed up for her UCSD interview with Malcolm, then three years old. “Sherley’s willingness to go it alone was a part of her character.”
Posted April 13, 2000
Stories this photo appears in:
Sherley Anne Williams' coolness toward outsiders, James Hubbell sees San Diego as forgotten city
July 10, 2021
African American and in San Diego
Raised not to hope too hard Sherley Anne Williams was delighted when the New York Times listed her novel on its recommended reading list. The book had gone into a third printing, and her publisher …
January 20, 2020
Jangchup Phelgyal and the Reader
Born Hawkins Mitchell in Southeast San Diego and sent to St. Augustine High School, he was a Wallace Stegner fellow at Stanford. He began writing feature stories for the Reader at the urging of Judith …
May 26, 2019
Sherley Williams – from Fresno to La Jolla
Sherley and I were the same age, both of us writers, both of us descendants of slaves. In 1966 we became the first in our respective families to graduate from college.
April 13, 2000