Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Dreams and visions, prophetic words from God about ""dusty souls,"" speaking in tongues while ""in the spirit""-narratives of these and similar events comprise the heart of Every Time I Feel the Spirit . This in-depth study of a Black congregation in Charleston, South Carolina provides a window into the tremendously important yet still largely overlooked world of African American religion as the faith is lived by ordinary believers. For decades, scholars have been preoccupied with the relation between Black Christianity, civil rights, and social activism. Every Time I Feel the Spirit is about

African American women --- Religious life. --- Religion.

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

This study examines the Black Women's Renaissance (BWR) - the flowering of literary talent among African American women at the end of the 20th century. It focuses on the historical and heritage novels of the 1980s and the vexed relationship between black cultural nationalism and black feminism. It argues that when the nation seemingly fell out of fashion, black women writers sought to re-create what Renan called "a soul, a spiritual principle" for their ethnic group. BWR narratives, especially those associated with womanism, appreciated "culture bearing" mothers as cultural reproducers of the nation and transmitters of its values. In this way, the writers of the BWR gave rise to "matrifocal" cultural nationalism that superseded masculine cultural nationalism of the previous decade and made black women, instead of black men, principal agents/carriers of national identity. This monograph argues that even though matrifocal nationalism empowered women, ultimately it was a flawed project. It promoted gender and cultural essentialism, i.e. it glorified black motherhood and mother-daughter bonding and condemned other, more radical models of black female subjectivity. Moreover, the BWR, vivified by middle-class and educated black women, turned readers' attention from more contentious social issues, such as class mobility or wealth redistribution. The monograph compares the cultural nationalist novels of the 1980s with social protest novels written by the same authors in the 1970s and explains the rationale behind the change in their aesthetic and political agenda. It also contrasts novels written by womanist writers (Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor to name just a few) and by African Caribbean immigrant or second-generation writers (Audre Lorde, Paule Marshall, Jamaica Kincaid and Michelle Cliff) to show that, on the score of cultural nationalism, the BWR was not a monolithic phenomenon. African American and African Caribbean women writers collectively contributed to the flourishing of the BWR, but they did not share the same ideas on black identities, histories, or the question of ethnonational belonging.

African American women authors. --- Race awareness in literature. --- Women, Black, in literature.

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

"Samantha Pinto explores how histories of and the ongoing fame of Phillis Wheatley, Sally Hemings, Sarah Baartman, Mary Seacole, and Sarah Forbes Bonetta generate new ways of imagining black feminist futures."--

Women, Black, in popular culture. --- African American women in popular culture. --- Women, Black --- African American women --- African American feminists. --- Womanism. --- Fame --- Legal status, laws, etc. --- Social aspects. --- Wheatley, Phillis, --- Hemings, Sally. --- Baartman, Sarah. --- Seacole, Mary, --- Bonetta, Sarah Forbes,

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

This special collection assembles some of the most pre-eminent scholars in the field in African, African American, and American Studies to explore the ways writers reclaim the Black female body in African American literature using the theoretical, social, cultural, and religious frameworks of spirituality and religion. Central to these discussions is Black women’s agency within these realms—their uncanny ability to invent and reinvent themselves within individual and communal spaces that frame them as both outsider and insider, unworthy and worthy, deviant and sacred, excess and minimal. Scholars have sought to discuss these tensions, acknowledged and affirmed in prose, poetry, music, essays, speeches, written plays, or short stories. Forgiveness, healing, redemption, and reclamation provide entry into these vibrant explorations of self-discovery, passion, and self-creation that interrogate traditional views of what is spiritual and what is religious. Discussed writers include Toni Morrison, Phillis Wheatley, James Baldwin, Tina McElroy Ansa, Toni Cade Bambara, and Thomas Dorsey.

health --- healing --- ancestral mediation --- illness --- activism --- women’s rights --- spirituality --- Oshun --- eroticism --- God --- Oya --- ghost --- spirits --- honey --- storms --- caul --- the amen corner --- james baldwin --- black feminism --- sermon --- art --- literature --- music --- black preacher --- religion --- gospel music --- Thomas Dorsey --- Nettie Dorsey --- blues --- maternal death --- infant mortality --- hapticality --- Gnosticism --- womanist theology --- African American women --- Toni Morrison --- Song of Solomon --- Paradise --- The Source of Self-Regard --- Phillis Wheatley --- race --- Thomas Jefferson --- Christianity --- African American women writers --- 1970 --- extra-naturalism --- African American women’s spirituality --- nommo --- multimodal narrative --- self-actualization --- community --- asylum hill project --- naming --- pre-emancipation --- genealogy --- grounds of contention --- (in)visible --- revisionist interrogation --- spiritual translation --- uppity --- womanist --- n/a --- women's rights --- African American women's spirituality

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

This book examines how cultural and ideological reactions to activism in the post-Civil Rights Black community were depicted in fiction written by Black women writers, 1965-1980. By recognizing and often challenging prevailing cultural paradigms within the post-Civil Rights era, writers such as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Toni Cade Bambara, and Paule Marshall fictionalized the black community in critical ways that called for further examination of progressive activism after the much publicized 'end' of the Civil Rights Movement. Through their writings, the authors' confronted marked shifts

American fiction --- African American women authors --- Womanism in literature. --- African Americans in literature. --- African Americans --- African American authors --- History and criticism. --- Women authors --- Political and social views. --- Race identity. --- Social conditions. --- Negritude --- Afro-Americans in literature --- Negroes in literature --- Afro-American women authors --- Women authors, African American --- Women authors, American --- Ethnic identity