"Impressive--honest, clear-eyed with a shapeliness natural to poets. . . . In addition to possessing the ease and intimacy of Clifton's poetry, Generations speaks to, for, and from fictional and posthumous lives--Moses, Medgar Evers, Amazons, Bob Marley, Sleeping Beauty, etc. She is comfortable and knowing about the dead. . . . Lucille is another word for light, which is the soul of 'enlightenment.' And she knew it." --Toni Morrison

"Generations is a book about staring history in the face. . . . she (Clifton) faced the profound absurdity of being alive." --Lavelle Porter, JSTOR Daily

"Of great poets whose poems are kin to Clifton's, I think of Emily Dickinson; to Dickinson's intense compression Clifton adds explicit historical consciousness. And of Pablo Neruda: Clifton subtracts hyperbole from his elemental clarity." --Elizabeth Alexander, The New Yorker

"Lucille Clifton helped me hear things--helps all of those who love her work hear things that they would rather ignore." --Reginald Dwayne Betts

"[Clifton's] works are explicitly historical and of a palpable present moment." --The Paris Review

"You can easily see the reflection of [Clifton's] tight, spare poetry in this exceedingly compact book, which is all the more affecting for its light touch and suggestive sketches of all the American Sayles, including a few of the white ones." --Kirkus Review

"[Generations] is a song of self. All the defiant joy of [Lucille Clifton's] verse is present in this family history, beginning with the ancestor who walked cross-country only to be sold into slavery at age 8. For those whose histories were stolen through violence, this is a proclamation of power and resistance." --Jessica Ferri, Los Angeles Times

"Lucille Clifton is amazing. . . [A] powerful book about looking for family and family roots. . . What is beautiful in [Generations] is the sounds of the voices . . . of family coming through the story." --Tess Taylor, "All Things Considered," NPR