Shockley was encouraged to read and write creatively at a young age and was heavily influenced by Richard Wright's short-story form in Uncle Tom's Children.
She served as a professor of library science, university archivist, as well as an associate librarian for special collections at Fisk and founded the Black Oral History Program until she later retired in 1988.
These short stories include "Holly Craft Isn't Gay" (1980), "A Meeting of Sapphic Daughters" (Spring 1979), which can be found in The Black and White of It (1980), as well as "The Eternal Triangle" (1948), "The Curse of Kapa" (1951), and "Monday Will Be Better" (1964), posted in various outlets such as the Afro-American (Baltimore) and Negro Digest.
[9] Through her character Renay, who leaves her abusive husband for a white, rich woman, Shockley explores what being an African American, female and homosexual is like in America in the twentieth century, whom she tries to "normalize".
[11] In her collection of short stories, The Black and White of It, Shockley also stages an African-American lesbian as the main characters, using successful women who are professional and strong in nature face struggles with sexuality.
Shockley's nonfiction works, such as her section in Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology edited by Barbara Smith, also addresses these same issues revolving around sexuality in the African-American community.
Shockley claimed to have written the piece in order to shed light on the black church's hypocrisy of shaming homosexuals yet partaking in all other acts deemed as sins.
[11] Although recognized by authors such as Alice Walker, who gave Loving Her praise in her review of the novel in 1974[13] as well as Nellie McKay and Rita B. Dandridge who have acknowledged the writer, Shockley's fictional works has been often ignored by the masses if not criticized.
Along with this, some argue that Shockley uses too many generalizations in her texts, has a poor stylistic choice, and did not work to battle common stereotypes about black lesbianism.