Selected Gems of Poetry, Comedy and Drama

Mercedes Gilbert (1889-1952) was a well-known actress, playwright, songwriter, and novelist of her day, who has now undeservedly fallen into obscurity. Selected Gems (1931) is a collection of her work containing several monologues in dialect and lyric poems. Aunt Sara's Wooden God, published in 1938 with a foreword by Langston Hughes, is a novel depicting the "Cain and Abel" relationship between two brothers and the painful consequences for their mother.