The experiences of childhood remain surprisingly visceral in memory — bike rides through balmy summer nights, the way your grandmother's hand felt in yours, the precise moment when you realized that the color of your skin might influence another's impression of you. In Dream Me Home Safely, a collection of essays on childhood, thirty-four writers share their memories — of family, of friends, of those seemingly small moments (sometimes sweet, sometimes painful) that shape a lifetime.

Dream Me Home Safely features essays by some of our finest writers — Alice Walker, Chang-rae Lee, Anna Quindlen, Beverly Lowry, John Edgar Wideman, Nikki Giovanni, Lois-Ann Yamanaka, Anthony Grooms, Ntozake Shange, Joyce Carol Oates, and Faith Ringgold, among others. The result is a series of snapshots — a sort of verbal photo album — of what it means to be a child in America.

Dream Me Home Safely tells the story of the many ways children make a place in their family and in the world. With all the insight and skill for which these writers are well known — with poignancy, great humor, and zestful candor — they offer a glimpse of their childhood selves. They share the people, places, and ideas that made them who they are today and challenge us to consider how our children will remember their own childhoods.

Edited by Susan Richards Shreve with Children's Defense Fund™ founder Marian Wright Edelman, Dream Me Home Safely is being published on the thirtieth anniversary of the CDF.

Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children's Defense Fund (CDF), has been an advocate for disadvantaged Americans for her entire professional life. Under her leadership, CDF has become the nation's strongest voice for children and families. The mission of the Children's Defense Fund is to Leave No Child Behind® and to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start, and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities.

Edelman, a graduate of Spelman College and Yale Law School, began her career in the mid-1960s, when, as the first black woman admitted to the Mississippi Bar, she directed the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund office in Jackson, Mississippi. In l968, she moved to Washington, D.C., as counsel for the Poor People's Campaign that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., began organizing before his death. She founded the Washington Research Project, a public interest law firm and the parent body of the Children's Defense Fund. For two years she served as the director of the Center for Law and Education at Harvard University, and in l973 she started CDF.

Edelman served on the Board of Trustees of Spelman College, which she chaired from 1976 to 1987, and was the first woman elected by alumni as a member of the Yale University Corporation, on which she served from 1971 to 1977. She has received many honorary degrees and awards, including the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Prize, the Heinz Award, and a MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship. In 2000, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, and the Robert F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Award for her writings, which include seven books: Families in Peril: An Agenda for Social Change; The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours; Guide My Feet: Meditations and Prayers on Loving and Working for Children; Stand for Children; Lanterns: A Memoir of Mentors; Hold My Hand: Prayers for Building a Movement to Leave No Child Behind; and I'm Your Child, God: Prayers for Our Children.

She is a board member of the Robin Hood Foundation, the Association to Benefit Children, City Lights School, and Outward Bound and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.

Marian Wright Edelman is married to Peter Edelman, a professor at Georgetown Law School. They have three sons, Joshua, Jonah, and Ezra, and two granddaughters, Ellika and Zoe.

1973 Children Out of School in America, CDF's first major report, finds that two million children are not enrolled in school, including 750,000 children with disabilities.

1974 The first CDF state office opens in Mississippi to remedy exclusion of children with special needs, to organize parents, and to mount successful legal challenges.

1975 The Education for All Handicapped Children Act (now the Individuals with Disabilities Act) guarantees that all disabled children have a federal right to education.

1976 Staff from CDF visit more than five hundred jails across America; Children in Adult Jails published.

1977 EPSDT (Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnosis, and Treatment): Does It Spell Health Care for Poor Children? challenges poor state enforcement of children's Medicaid.

1978 Children Without Homes documents conditions for more than 500,000 children living away from their families.

1979 Advocacy by CDF prevents $200 million cut to childcare.

1980 The Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act is enacted to protect more than 500,000 children in the child welfare system by encouraging family reunification or adoption.

1981 First CDF National Conference is held; Child Watch Visitation Program begins.

1982 CDF Action Council publishes first Nonpartisan Congressional Voting Record on children. A CDF lawsuit wins dental care for 300,000 Texas children eligible for Medicaid.

1983 The CDF Children's Survival Bill sets a baseline agenda for Congress on investment in child welfare that results in significant restoration of funds, following earlier budget cuts in children's programs.

1984 First major expansion in federal Medicaid for children is enacted after four years of CDF advocacy; 500,000 children receive health care.

1985 Five-year prenatal care campaign is launched, to combat infant mortality and low birth-weight outcomes and to prevent teen pregnancy.

1986 Federal Medicaid expansions make health coverage available to three million pregnant women and children under five in poor families.

1987 The Immunization Status of American Children reveals declining vaccination rates for children. The federal budget increases spending on children by $700 million.

1988 Federal immunization funding increases by 50 percent, helping a million children. The Family Support Act provides twelve months of health coverage and childcare to families making the transition from welfare to work.

1989 Advocacy efforts led by CDF result in an increase of $152 million for Head Start.

1990 First Beat the Odds^® event is held in Los Angeles. A Child Care and Development Block Grant is enacted, providing childcare for about 430,000 low-income children.

1991 The Black Community Crusade for Children^® (BCCC) forms the Black Student Leadership Network® to train thousands of young leaders.

1992 Thousands of religious congregations of all faiths join the first National Observance of Children's Sabbaths^®.

1993 The BCCC launches the Freedom Schools project, based on the concept of the 1964 Mississippi summer Freedom School movement and incorporating reading, conflict resolution, cultural and historic enrichment, and parent involvement.

1994 CDF purchases Haley Farm in Clinton, Tennessee, as center for spiritual renewal, leadership development, and intergenerational, interdisciplinary, and interracial communication.

1995 Progress and Peril, describing the crisis among America's black children, is published by CDF/BCCC.

1996 At the Lincoln Memorial, CDF convenes Stand for Children, the largest mass demonstration in support of children in U.S. history.

1997 The State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) provides $40 billion over ten years to cover five to ten million uninsured children nationwide.

1998 To ensure that children are gaining access to health care, CDF begins extensive tracking of SCHIP implementation in states. Child Care Now! Campaign is launched.

1999 The CDF report Children and Guns describes the impact of gun violence on children.

2000 Marian Wright Edelman speaks at the Million Mom March on Washington, which CDF endorses.

2001 The landmark Dodd-Miller comprehensive Act to Leave No Child Behind (S. 940/HR 1990) is introduced.

2002 The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act is signed into law after years of CDF advocacy.

2003 CDF hosts the first presidential candidates' forum on children, at which all Democratic candidates appear. President Bush declines the invitation.

Marian Wright Edelman Foreword
Julia Alvarez Ars Politica
Tina McElroy Ansa The Center of the Universe
Robert Bausch My Father's Dance
Bebe Moore Campbell from Sweet Summer
Alan Cheuse Rowing in Amboy
Stuart Dybek Thread
Patricia Elam Parenthood: A Life Sentence
Carolyn Ferrell A Child's Garden of Verse
Merrill Joan Gerber from The Kingdom of Brooklyn
Nikki Giovanni Saturday Days
Stephen Goodwin Transgressions
Patricia Griffith The Spiral Staircase
Anthony Grooms Christmas, Alabama, 1962
Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston Ba-chan's Superstition
Chang-rae Lee Mute in an English-Only World
Beverly Lowry Memphis Years
Michael Patrick MacDonald Spitting Image
Mary Morris The Bluff
Bich Minh Nguyen Toadstools
Howard Norman Birds at Night
Joyce Carol Oates The Gravedigger's Daughter
Lisa Page Psychedelic Shack
Michael Parker Movie Where You Don't See the Monster Until the End
Alexs Pate Innocence Found
Anna Quindlen Summer Coming
Nina Revoyr Foreigner in Marshfield
Faith Ringgold The Boy Nobody Knew
Ntozake Shange Growing Up in St. Louis
Susan Richards Shreve Three Women and Me
Susan Straight Crick
Elizabeth Strout The Swimming Pool
Alice Walker Childhood
John Edgar Wideman Sitting
Lois-Ann Yamanaka JohnJohn's World