[2][3] White grew up in a working class neighborhood in Gary, Indiana, and attended Alain L Locke Elementary School.
Returning to the United States, she studied theatre at the University of Washington and began writing professionally while living in Seattle.
[6] Black Women's Health Book included chapters from Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison.
[8] Publishers Weekly summarized the book's 41 different writings as covering "the vast spectrum of the black women's health experience as patient, healer and witness".
[9] In the San Francisco Chronicle Patricia Holt concluded that the book "breaks the silence, bursts the taboos, and mends many hearts along the way".