This article on Paulette Childress White (1948–) is published in The Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Women Writers (2007). White is an American poet from Michigan. She stated in Contemporary Authors Online 2002: “I write from a sense of irony, because I want to make sense of my experience of life. I am also a painter. I write and paint because I have a need to give substance to my ideas, feelings, and experiences, and because I believe it is good and important work.”
Lotus Press, a non-profit literary organization, still publishes both of White’s major works of poetry—Love Poem to a Black Junkie (1975) and The Watermelon Dress: Portrait of a Woman (1983). White’s short story, “Getting the Facts of Life” (1989) was anthologized in three different publications from 1991-1993.