I read Barbara Smith's essay "Toward a Black Feminist Criticism" in which at the beginning she cites the history of how Black women's literature has been perceived in literary circles. Many talented black women writers have produced fantastic work depicting life in the slums and relationships between race and environment. But these writers have been criticized for not making their work more accessible to broader subjects like class and environment. The critics making these comments belittled the issues of race that these authors were dealing with.

Smith goes on to say that biggest "mishandling of Black women writers by whites is paralleled more often by their not being handled at all, particularly in feminist theory" (2305). When race and feminism are discussed in literature they are usually separated. The two are rarely discussed together, and this especially applies to lesbian black women.

Smith seems to make her point that in literary criticism a black lesbian woman never exists. She may be written about by black women writers, but critics tend to glaze over them and focus on more talked about issues like mainstream feminism or racism without taking into account the significance of a black woman character and her relationship to other women.