Stumbling Blocks and Other Unfinished Work

By Delores Phillips, edited by Delia Steverson

Stumbling Blocks and Other Unfinished Work expands and contextualizes the unpublished works of the late African American writer Delores Phillips. Born in Cartersville, Georgia in 1950, Delores Faye Phillips spent much of her childhood in Georgia before moving to Cleveland, Ohio, and is best known for her 2004 novel The Darkest Child. While the novel was met with critical acclaim, little is known about Phillips herself or about her other writings.

This volume corrects the misconception that The Darkest Child, the only novel published in her lifetime, was Phillips’s sole work. Rather, it establishes Phillips as an experienced and prolific writer who created multi-genre literature throughout her life. In addition to the sequel to The Darkest Child, this collection also includes an unfinished third novel (No Ordinary Rain), ten poems, seven short stories, contextualizing essays, and an in-depth biography of Phillips. Grounded in years of archival research and interviews, Stumbling Blocks engages in necessary recovery work of Black, disabled writers, further enriching the corpus of American literature.

This digital resource serves as an educational supplement to enhance readers’ experience with the volume and contains materials of interest to general audiences, students, scholars, and teachers alike. As mentioned in the book, the site contains an earlier version of No Ordinary Rain, entitled Tomorrow People; a rare video of Phillips reading from The Darkest Child; and Phillips’s journalistic efforts from Cleveland’s The Plain Dealer newspaper. The companion also contains bonus content not available in the book such as a timeline of Phillips’s life with images, reviews of The Darkest Child, discussion questions for teaching with Stumbling Blocks, a Reading Resource list, and open access to various documents from Phillips’s archives and Steverson’s archival process.