Book excerpt: This important book collects a wide range of fiction and poetry that first appeared in the pages of Callaloo, the premier literary journal devoted to African-diaspora literature and to Black literary and cultural studies. Founded in 1976-and still edited-by Charles Henry Rowell (Texas A&M University, College Station), Callaloo is both national and international in terms of scope and readership. It is also, as Henry Louis Gates, Jr., observed, "without doubt, the most elegantly edited journal of African and African-American literature [of] today." Making Callaloo, an anthology ideally suited for all readers studying modern Black literature, includes the work of Ralph Ellison, Alice Walker, Rita Dove, Yusef Komunyakaa, Lucille Clifton, Terry McMillan, Ai, Nathaniel Mackey, John Edgar Wideman, Michael S. Harper, Charles Johnson, Thylias Moss, and many other distinguished authors.