"Provocative . . . articulates the importance of embodied, erotic spirituality to black female subjectivity and empowerment."--Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature "Sets out to reclaim the right of black women to their sexual and erotic expression untainted by the stereotypes and disparagements that have historically confined them."--African American Review "Captures one of the most challenging concerns of scholars who engage black women's literature, culture, and theory: the ongoing quest to locate a form of black female sexual agency that neither withers in the chilly lake of sexual repression nor explodes in the heat of hypersexual stereotypes."--MELUS: Journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States "Successfully undertakes an analysis of how black women writers have used overlapping narrative depictions of sexuality and spirituality to recast the denigrated black female body and rewrite an empowered and fully actualized black female subject."--Candice M. Jenkins, author of Private Lives, Proper Relations: Regulating Black Intimacy "Weir-Soley speaks with an authority that comes from real knowledge of, investment in, and attention to the details of the African cosmologies and textual complexities she unearths."--Carine Mardorossian, SUNY-Buffalo "The most original and significant contributions are the often brilliant readings of Morrison, Adisa, and Danticat. The work is riveting, both methodologically and critically."--Leslie Sanders, York University Western European mythology and history tend to view spirituality and sexuality as opposite extremes. But sex can be more than a function of the body and religion more than a function of the mind, as exemplified in the works and characters of such writers as Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Opal Palmer Adisa, and Edwidge Danticat. Donna Weir-Soley builds on the work of previous scholars who have identified the ways that black women's narratives often contain a form of spirituality rooted in African cosmology, which consistently grounds their characters' self-empowerment and quest for autonomy. What she adds to the discussion is an emphasis on the importance of sexuality in the development of black female subjectivity, beginning with Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and continuing into contemporary black women's writings. Writing in a clear, lucid, and straightforward style, Weir-Soley supports her thesis with close readings of various texts, including Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and Morrison's Beloved. She reveals how these writers highlight the interplay between the spiritual and the sexual through religious symbols found in Voudoun, Santeria, Condomble, Kumina, and Hoodoo. Her arguments are particularly persuasive in proposing an alternative model for black female subjectivity.

This volume studies processes of creating voices of the past to analyze and to juxtapose, discussing the nature of the educational community viewed through feminist theory to reveal hidden ideas surrounding stereotypes, gender status, and power in the postcolonial era. The contributions brought together here explore the various facets of language to focus on metaphorical grammatical constructions, unique and specific with form and function. They interpret various works to capture the essence of style, as well as rhetorical function of basic structure of grammar, diction and syntax, in a literary work as message and meaning. Furthermore, the book also discusses useful pedagogical and theoretical processes used by the literary scholar concerning the power of writing for cultural change. As such, the book will appeal to those who wish to heal through writing. The proceeds of the book support the authors’ local soup kitchen and crisis centers for domestic abuse.

This book presents critiques about African American authors and poets, as well as a composer, who have contributed towards social change, namely Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Terence Blanchard, Ann Petry, and Rita Dove. It also discusses Viet Thanh Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American writer, and his novel The Sympathizer.

A multilingual, transnational literary tradition, Jewish American writing has long explored questions of personal identity and national boundaries. These questions can engage students in literature, writing, or religion; at Jewish, Christian, or secular schools; and in or outside the United States. This volume takes an expansive view of Jewish American literature, beginning with writing from the earliest colonies in the Americas and continuing to contemporary Soviet-born authors in the United States, including works that engage deeply with religious concepts and others that embrace assimilation. It invites readers to rethink the nature of American multiculturalism, suggests pairings of Jewish American texts with other ethnic American literatures, and examines the workings of whiteness and privilege. Contributors offer varied perspectives on classic texts such as Yekl, Bread Givers, and "Goodbye, Columbus," along with approaches to interdisciplinary topics including humor, graphic novels, and musical theater. The volume concludes with an extensive resources section.

The West fears desire. It fears ecstasy. It fears flesh. It copes with its fears by deploying its intellectual, political, and religious instruments to regulate, discipline, and punish. Western fear of the erotic has led to its regimes of racial and gender hierarchies, institutions of repression, and dehumanization of large portions of the human family. In the face of anti-erotic hegemony, Black women have too often yielded to Western Christianity's anti-erotic culture, its misnaming of the erotic as evil, and its denial of the erotic's relationship to the divine. But they have also resisted. They have also defied. This book is rooted in that tradition of defiance. Erotic Defiance considers the sacred and transformative power of the flesh through investigating the ethical and theological dimensions of the erotic experiences of Black women and performances of Black womanhood. Drawing on womanist and feminist analyses, Courtney Bryant approaches the erotic as a divine energy that manifests love in and through the flesh. Such love takes many forms. It extends beyond the sexual to include passion, spirituality, community, and self-love. By positing love's manifestations as sacred work that cannot be accomplished without the divine, Bryant presents the erotic as a collaboration between Spirit and flesh. This collaboration results in unique, liberating properties that make possible the kind of healing, resistance, and self-making necessary for Black women's self-actualization in a world hell-bent on their erasure and demonization.

Over the last few decades, the genre of urban fiction—or street lit—has become increasingly popular as more novels secure a place on bestseller lists that were once the domain of mainstream authors. In the 1970s, pioneers such as Donald Goines, Iceberg Slim, and Claude Brown paved the way for today’s street fiction novelists, poets, and short story writers, including Sister Souljah, Kenji Jasper, and Colson Whitehead. In Street Lit: Representing the Urban Landscape, Keenan Norris has assembled a varied collection of articles, essays, interviews, and poems that capture the spirit of urban fiction and nonfiction produced from the 1950s through the present day. Providing both critical analyses and personal insights, these works explore the street lit phenomenon to help readers understand how and why this once underground genre has become such a vital force in contemporary literature. Interviews with literary icons David Bradley, Gerald Early, and Lynel Gardner are balanced with critical discussions of works by Goines, Jasper, Whitehead, and others. With an introduction by Norris that explores the roots of street lit, this collection defines the genre for today’s readers and provides valuable insights into a cultural force that is fast becoming as important to the American literary scene as hip-hop is to music. Featuring a foreword by bestselling novelist Omar Tyree (Flyy Girl) and comprised of works by scholars, established authors, and new voices, Street Lit will inspire any reader who wants to understand the significance of this sometimes controversial but unquestionably popular art form.

Taking up the perceived tensions between the LGBTQ community and religious African Americans, Marlon Rachquel Moore examines how strategies of antihomophobic resistance dovetail into broader literary and cultural concerns. In the Life and in the Spirit shows how creative writers integrate expressions of faith or the supernatural with sensuality, desire, and pleasure in a way that highlights a spectrum of black sexualities and gender expressions. Through these fusions, African American writers enact queer spiritualities that situate the well-known work of James Baldwin into a broader community of artists, including Bruce Nugent, Ann Allen Shockley, Alice Walker, Langston Hughes, Jewelle Gomez, Becky Birtha, an d Octavia Butler. In these texts from 1963 to 1999, Moore identifies a pervasive, affirming stance toward LGBTQ people and culture in African American literary production.

Bringing together disciplines across the arts, humanities and social sciences, this Handbook presents novel and lively examinations of the dynamic ways religion, gender and sexuality operate. Applying feminist, intersectional, and reflexive approaches, the volume aims to loosen imperialist and exclusionary figurations that have underwritten and tethered religion, gender, and sexuality together. While holding onto the field of inquiry, the Handbook offers contributions that interrogate and untie it from the terms and conditions that have formed it. The volume is organized into thematic sections: - Forces and Futures - Activisms and Labors - Agencies and Practices - Relationships and Institutions - Texts and Objects Chapters range across religious, geographical, historical, political, and social contexts and feature an array of case-studies, experiences, and topics that exemplify the reflexive intention of the volume, including explorations of race, whiteness, colonialism, and the institutional intolerance of minority groups. Contributors also advance new areas of research in religion including artificial intelligence, farming, migrant mothering, child sexual abuse, mediatization, national security, legal frameworks, addiction and recovery, decolonial hermeneutics, creative arts, sport, sexual practices, and academic friendship. This is an essential contribution to the fields of religious studies and gender and sexuality studies.

Essays exploring contemporary black fiction and examining important issues in current African American literary studies. In this volume, Lovalerie King and Shirley Moody-Turner have compiled a collection of essays that offer access to some of the most innovative contemporary black fiction while addressing important issues in current African American literary studies. Distinguished scholars Houston Baker, Trudier Harris, Darryl Dickson-Carr, and Maryemma Graham join writers and younger scholars to explore the work of Toni Morrison, Edward P. Jones, Trey Ellis, Paul Beatty, Mat Johnson, Kyle Baker, Danzy Senna, Nikki Turner, and many others. The collection is bracketed by a foreword by novelist and graphic artist Mat Johnson, one of the most exciting and innovative contemporary African American writers, and an afterword by Alice Randall, author of the controversial parody The Wind Done Gone. Together, King and Moody-Turner make the case that diversity, innovation, and canon expansion are essential to maintaining the vitality of African American literary studies. “A compelling collection of essays on the ongoing relevance of African American literature to our collective understanding of American history, society, and culture. Featuring a wide array of writers from all corners of the literary academy, the book will have national appeal and offer strategies for teaching African American literature in colleges and universities across the country.” —Gene Jarrett, Boston University “[This book describes] a fruitful tension that brings scholars of major reputation together with newly emerging critics to explore the full range of literary activities that have flourished in the post-Civil Rights era. Notable are such popular influences as hip-hop music and Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club.” —American Literary Scholarship, 2013