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There is a wonderful book, "Rise Up Singing: Black Women Writers on Motherhood," that I picked up with some skepticism. The perils and joys of motherhood are universal, I thought ... why single out African-American mothers?

But I put down this book -- a collection of 31 essays, poems and stories -- feeling richer and wiser. On one level, "Rise Up Singing" is a gift to all mothers, regardless of race, and it's a rare mom who will not recognize herself on one page or another. On another level, this book delivers a subtle and honest picture of black American family life that translates outside of that culture.

Most of the essays were written especially for this collection. There are uplifting poems and tributes to Southern grandmothers. But the sad tales are the ones that will stay with me: Painter Faith Ringgold writes about her dedication to art that may have alienated her daughters. Patricia Smith, the journalist and poet, tells of losing a son to the streets but rescuing his child.

The book has just won an American Book Award, one of 10 prizes given each year by the Before Columbus Foundation for outstanding literary merit and contribution to multicultural understanding.

In an interview, the book's editor, Cecelie S. Berry, talked about the difficulties of raising black sons. She is a Harvard-trained lawyer who stays home with Spenser and Sam, 11 and 13, which was her first unconventional decision. There's a strong opinion in the black community, she said, that she would best serve her community by using her legal skills.

"I ran into so many people who thought I was kicking back and just putting my feet up," she told me.

But motherhood had changed her. She found, when she tried working with her first son in day care, that she was desperate to get home to him by the end of the day. So she left work, and as she watched her boys grow, the challenges they faced brought her back to her own childhood. She began writing as a way to articulate for them and be clear for herself what she had experienced.

"I saw myself revisiting my life -- coping with peer pressure, racial identity, being myself," Berry said. She became a very vigilant parent.

One place she started was with television. The media disproportionately target black children, she said, and she finds herself constantly reinterpreting the images on television, such as the idea that all black kids dress in hip-hop fashion and speak a certain slang.

"As a black parent, you're really under the gun when it comes to the media," she said. "I tell them there is no single black way of talking or walking or dressing."

One way to emphasize the point is to teach her boys history. "People died so that we could be free enough to express ourselves as individuals," she said. One day, her son was asked in class -- an integrated class in a progressive school district -- what music he liked. He said jazz. A black girl near him turned around in her seat and said, "Hip-hop is your culture."

Time for another history lesson about the African-American artists who invented jazz.

I asked her if all this "reinterpretation" is working. "It is," she said. "I talk and talk and talk -- I'm a very verbal person."

Berry talks frankly with her sons about racism, which is a change from the way she was raised.

"My parents taught us that if we were better prepared and superbly spoken, we would not run into racism," she said, which she found was not true. She wishes her parents had taught her that she would encounter racism, but that she didn't need to be scarred by it.

"There are times you get a visceral feeling that someone is responding to the color of your skin," she tells her sons. "It's not you, it's not your problem. It's an illness the other person is trying to afflict you with."

She teaches them that every rude encounter is not necessarily racist. Spenser went for a check-up with a new pediatrician, a white woman, who told him he probably did not need sunblock because he is "dark as the night." It was an insensitive thing to say, Berry told her son, but it wasn't mean-spirited.

She writes in the introduction to her book, "Black mothers must be able to spot the wolf in sheep's clothing, the smiling face that seeks to crush their children's spirit and undermine their progress -- or, just as damaging, to withhold the recognition fairly won. And we must do so without allowing our children to cry wolf, to view themselves as victims of discrimination whenever they are challenged to do better."

This is a very wise and articulate book, compiled by a woman who seems especially able to cross between American cultures and explain them to each other. I have a feeling that all the talking Berry is doing with her sons will continue to pay off for the rest of us in the future.

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