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Spirituality, Identity and Resistance in African American Literature
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Spirituality, Identity and Resistance in African American Literature

A special issue of Literature (ISSN 2410-9789).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 November 2021) | Viewed by 7677

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Carolyn M. Jones Medine

E-Mail Website1 Website2
Guest Editor
Religion Department and Institute for African American Studies, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, USA
Interests: African American literature and theory; postmodern theory; African American Buddhism; Buddhist-Christian studies
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue of Literature will focus on African American religions in/and African American literature. This issue will look broadly at African American literary forms, from memoir to novel, poetry to plays, novels to essays, aiming to understand how African American religions are understood and practiced.

African American religions are religions of contact, of violence and displacement, of memory, and of choice. African peoples in diaspora encountered European and American Christianity, European and Indigenous American folkways, and Islam. In addition, African Americans retain memories of Africa, passed down from generation to generation. These memories are part of their practices and understanding, also incorporating new religious movements and African-derived practices such as Kwanzaa. In addition, African Americans have entered the “world” religions, such as Buddhism.

This volume seeks to explore how African American religions are expressed in a broad range of literary forms, like biographym memoir, novel, poetry, drama, essays, as well as slave and neo-slave narratives. While this issue is interested in canonical African American literature, like the work of Toni Morrison, it also seeks to see how religion is understood in popular literature, like science fiction and fantasy, mystery, romance, children’s literature, and other forms as well. Hence, we seek to broaden the understanding of how religion appears in and functions in African American cultural production. In addition, we are interested in religions including and other than Christianity, as well as syncretic traditions. James W. Coleman’s Faithful Vision: Treatments of the Sacred, Spiritual, and Supernatural in Twentieth-Century African American Fiction (2006), the work of Yolanda Pierce, including Hell Without Fires: Slavery, Christianity, and the Antebellum Spiritual Narrative (2005) and “African American Literature as Spiritual Witness: The Poetic Example of Margaret Alexander Walker” (Christianity and Literature 2009); Kimberly Rae Connor’s “Redeeming the Human Reality,” in Teaching Religion and Literature (2018); Craig R. Prentiss’ Staging Faith: Religion and African American Theater from the Harlem Renaissance to World War II (2015), and my own work on Buddhism in Alice Walker’s thought offer examples for thought but do not limit potential essay topics.

Prof. Dr. Carolyn M. Jones Medine
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Literature is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1000 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • African American religion and/in African American literature
  • memory and history
  • womanist
  • beauty
  • suffering
  • transformation
  • freedom
  • African Americans in “world” religions
  • religious imagination

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

13 pages, 1770 KiB  
Article
The Narrative Bodies of James Baldwin: A Discussion of Literary and Sartorial Style
by Sha’Mira Covington
Literature 2022, 2(4), 200-212; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature2040017 - 20 Sep 2022
Viewed by 2501
Abstract
Inspired by Terry Newman’s literary and sartorial analysis of writers in her book Legendary Authors and the Clothes They Wore, I analyze James Baldwin’s literary and sartorial style using excerpts from his works and archival photography. I also add a signifier/signified analysis [...] Read more.
Inspired by Terry Newman’s literary and sartorial analysis of writers in her book Legendary Authors and the Clothes They Wore, I analyze James Baldwin’s literary and sartorial style using excerpts from his works and archival photography. I also add a signifier/signified analysis using social semiotic theory. According to De Saussure, there are two main parts to any sign, the signifier, which connotes any material thing, and the signified, which is the meaning that is made of that thing by the receiver. Social semiotics changes the focus from the sign to the way people use semiotic resources to produce communicative artifacts, collectively. In the semiotic tradition, I extend the literary text (Go Tell it on the Mountain, Another Country, and Just Above My Head) to a larger reading of the culture in which it was created and to the more universal structures that are inherent within it. Clothing is also considered a critical semiotic resource because it is viewed as a sign that signifies a particular meaning. In my analysis, I illuminate how Baldwin’s sartorial style is a mirror (signifier) to reflect his literary style and reflects the creative and spiritual (signified) essence of his work, connected to and with collective Black narratives of style. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Spirituality, Identity and Resistance in African American Literature)
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15 pages, 273 KiB  
Article
An Ongoing Womanist Buddhist Project: Reading between the Times
by Chera Jo Watts
Literature 2022, 2(3), 154-168; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature2030013 - 03 Aug 2022
Viewed by 1898
Abstract
This article challenges the dominant Christian-centered approach to Black religious life by exploring contemporary Womanist Buddhist and Black Buddhist practice, writing, and thought alongside writings of early East Asian Buddhist nuns, noting similarities, differences, and the intersections among and between these written accounts. [...] Read more.
This article challenges the dominant Christian-centered approach to Black religious life by exploring contemporary Womanist Buddhist and Black Buddhist practice, writing, and thought alongside writings of early East Asian Buddhist nuns, noting similarities, differences, and the intersections among and between these written accounts. “Reading Between the Times” signals the ongoing nature of this project, and this particular paper draws heavily upon Kathryn Ann Tsai’s 1994 translation Lives of the Nuns: Biographies of Chinese Buddhist Nuns from the Fourth to Sixth Centuries along with several Womanist and/or Black Buddhist voices, such as Faith Adiele, Melanie Harris, bell hooks, Layli Maparyan, Carolyn Jones Medine, Alice Walker, reverend angel Kyodo williams, Jan Willis, and Pamela Ayo Yetunde. Rather than make definitive claims, this paper becomes curious with initial observations surrounding authorial voice, intersections of race/gender/class within a particular temporal space, “legitimacy” questions, and others—and, of course, invites more work in the future. Deploying an engaged Buddhist pedagogy to inform mindful scholarship, this paper reminds us that we have more commonalities than oppressive systems often admit or acknowledge, and it concludes with a call to action. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Spirituality, Identity and Resistance in African American Literature)
15 pages, 253 KiB  
Article
Call Her Beloved: A Lexicon for Abjection in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Beloved
by S. Satish Kumar
Literature 2022, 2(2), 47-61; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature2020005 - 29 Mar 2022
Viewed by 2199
Abstract
What does it mean to mourn for the loss of lives that are rendered ungrievable by history? More importantly, with what language does one grieve the loss or despoliation of lives that are rendered ungrievable through disremembrance? This study reads such concerns as [...] Read more.
What does it mean to mourn for the loss of lives that are rendered ungrievable by history? More importantly, with what language does one grieve the loss or despoliation of lives that are rendered ungrievable through disremembrance? This study reads such concerns as represented in two novels by Toni Morrison: The Bluest Eye and Beloved. Drawing on theorizations of the Other and the Abject in the philosophies of Emmanuel Levinas and Julia Kristeva, respectively, the readings of Morrison’s novels presented here seek to conceptualize the impacts of racial and racist oppression as the fallout from experiences of othering in the extreme. Confronting the desecration of human life and dignity engendered through racism, the study argues, is a descent into abjection. Through exploring Morrison’s narrative project, as explained in her non-fiction, this study seeks to conceptualize a possible lexicon for grieving the Abject without appropriating it or in any way diminishing its specific and radical alterity as a despoiled being. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Spirituality, Identity and Resistance in African American Literature)
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