Girls Together

Born August 25, 1944, in Bakersfield, California, to Lena-Leila Marie Siler and Jesse Winson Williams, Sherley Anne Williams is the third of four daughters.-- She, her parents, and her three sisters, Ruby, Jesmarie, and Lois, fought the constant despair of life in the housing projects in Fresno, California. Her family earned their living by picking fruit and cotton. Williams's father died of tuberculosis when she was eight years old, and her mother died when Williams was 16. An older sister, whom she credits with being a major influence in her life, reared her after the mother's death. During her early years, Williams found herself associating with people whom she said could be termed "juvenile delinquents"(Draper 1950). However, she was able to separate herself from those influences through her love of history and biography. Along with encouragement from her science teacher, she was also influenced by books such as Richard Wright's Black Boy and Eartha Kitt's Thursday's Child. Williams has been quoted as saying, "It was largely through these autobiographies I was able to take heart in my life"(CLC 318). Other writers such as Amiri Baraka, Sterling Brown, Langston Hughes, and poet Philip Levine, her professor at Fresno State University, also greatly influenced Williams.She was educated at Fresno State College (known today as California State University) and received her bachelor's in English in 1966. Williams also studied on the graduate level at Howard University and received her master's in English from Brown University in 1972. She began writing in 1966 and literally wrote for the remainder of her life. Supporting herself with her writings and by teaching, Williams in 1973 became the first African American literature professor at the University of California at San Diego. She constantly worked toward diversification of, not only the faculty and students, but also the canon. On the cover of her children's book Girls Together, Williams states that teaching satisfied her desire "to help students see relationships and make connections between some of what has gone before and what is going on now and what may come later."Williams, Sherley Anne is the author of 'Girls Together', published 1999 under ISBN 9780152309824 and ISBN 0152309829.