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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Dan Seiters     RURAL AFRICAN-AMERICAN HISTORY THROUGH MULTIPLE VOICES   Tell Us a Story: An African American Family in the Heartland  by Shirley Motley Portwood is a seven-generation family biography/autobiography, a collection of short stories chronicling the history of the Motley family in southern and central Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas.   In Tell Us a Story (254 pages, $16.95 paper, $49.95 cloth, June 21) the Motley family emerges through a series of vignettes in which family members tell their own stories plus the stories passed on from earlier generations. The result is an oral history that is both universal and specific to the family.   The Motleys form a varied, joyous family with cultural traditions reaching back into the slave past; into the harsh poverty that made even the basic necessities difficult to get; and into racial issues that divided blacks and whites during the era of Jim Crow segregation and inequality.   Tell Us a Story also shows us a story. Portwood has provided twenty-five black and white photographs of family members in family settings.              Shirley Motley Portwood is a professor in the Department of Historical Studies at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. More marketing news