Evelyn C. White

White was born in 1954 in Chicago, Illinois and raised in Gary, Indiana attending Alain L Locke Elementary School. [1] She earned a B.A. from Wellesley College, a master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and a master's degree in Public Administration from Harvard University.[2]

White joined the staff of the San Francisco Chronicle in the mid-1980s.[3] She published her first two books, Chain, Chain, Change: For Black Women in Abusive Relationships and Black Women's Health Book: Speaking for Ourselves, with Seal Press, a small feminist press based in Seattle, Washington.[4]

Black Women's Health Book included chapters from Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison.[5] Writing for the New York Times, Linda Villarosa observed that some of the book's topics were "unavoidably depressing" but noted that "when the essays hit home, they hit hard".[6] Publishers Weekly summarized the book's 41 different writings as covering "the vast spectrum of the black women's health experience as patient, healer and witness".[7] In the San Francisco Chronicle Patricia Holt concluded that the book "breaks the silence, bursts the taboos, and mends many hearts along the way".[8]

While White was teaching at a writing center in Oregon, one of her students brought her into contact with the novelist Alice Walker, who had read newspaper articles that White had written for the San Francisco Chronicle.[1] After a decade of White's work on Walker's biography, Alice Walker: A Life was published by Norton in 2004, with The New York Times calling it a "rich, complex story"[9] and Publishers Weekly describing it as a "vibrant narrative".[10]

• White, Evelyn C. (1985). Chain, Chain, Change: For Black Women in Abusive Relationships. Seal Press. OCLC 852661840.
• White, Evelyn C., ed. (1990). Black Women's Health Book: Speaking for Ourselves. Seal Press. ISBN 9780931188862.
• White, Evelyn C. (2004). Alice Walker: A Life. Norton. ISBN 9780393058918.
• White, Evelyn C.; Bealy, Joanne (2009). Every Goodbye Ain’t Gone: A Photo Narrative of Black Heritage on Salt Spring Island. Dancing Crow Press. ISBN 9780973251913.