African Spirituality in Black Womens Fiction

Threaded Visions of Memory, Community, Nature and Being

By (author) Elizabeth J. West

Publication date:

10 November 2011

Length of book:

192 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9780739168851

African Spirituality in Black Women’s Fiction: Threaded Visions of Memory, Community, Nature and Being is the nexus to scholarship on manifestations of Africanisms in black art and culture, particularly the scant critical works focusing on African metaphysical retentions. This study examines New World African spirituality as a syncretic dynamic of spiritual retentions and transformations that have played prominently in the literary imagination of black women writers. Beginning with the poetry of Phillis Wheatley, African Spiritualityin Black Women’s Fiction traces applications and transformations of African spirituality in black women’s writings that culminate in the conscious and deliberate celebration of Africanity in Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. The journey from Wheatley’s veiled remembrances to Hurston’s explicit gaze of continental Africa represents the literary journey of black women writers to represent Africa as not only a very real creative resource but also a liberating one. Hurston’s icon of black female autonomy and self realization is woven from the thread work of African spiritual principles that date back to early black women’s writings.

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1: From Africa to America

Chapter 2: Wheatley as Beginning

Chapter 3: African and Christian Encounters in Early Black Women’s Writings

Chapter 4: Silencing Africa: Christianity’s Persistent Voice in Early Black Women’s Novels

Chapter 5: Christianity and a Reawakening Africanity: Black Spirituality in the Post-Reconstruction Novels of Frances E. W. Harper and Pauline Hopkins

Chapter 6: Rethinking Religiosity in the Wake of Modernity: Transformations of Christian Idealisms in the Novels of Jessie Fauset

Chapter 7: Transformed Religiosities: Africanity and Christianity in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand and Zora Neale Hurston’s Jonah’s Gourd Vine and Their Eyes Were Watching God

West's fine study adds to a growing body of literature demonstrating the impact of African heritage on African American culture. West (Georgia State Univ.) makes an important advance on this tradition, exploring ways in which African spirituality is woven into the more obvious Christian elements of the works. This clearly written, well-researched study treats the canon of African women's literature from Phillis Wheatley through the Harlem Renaissance. The author discusses well-known works--Frances Harper's Iola Leroy, Harriet Jacobs's Incidents of the Life of a Slave Girl, Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Nella Larsen's Quicksand--but is at her best in her exploration of less-familiar texts, e.g., Hannah Crafts's The Bondswoman's Narrative; Gifts of Power, a collection of Rebecca Jackson's writings (CH, Dec'81); and Jarena Lee's Religious Experience and Journal of Mrs. Jarena Lee....The specificity of the topic makes the book most appropriate for large collections. Summing Up: Recommended.