Topics in Afro-American Literature: The Spirit and the Text
Kristin Hunter-Lattany profile
T 2-5
Africans are highly spiritual people, and in writers of African descent, faith and fiction are often combined. Modes of spirituality in African-American literature include Christianity, conjure, faith healing, hoodoo, animism, pantheism, and communion with ancestral spirits that cross barriers of space and time. We will explore the ways in which spiritual elements inform and empower the works of African-American writers, including Charles Chesnutt, The Conjure Woman; James Weldon Johnson, God's Trombones; Zora Neale Hurston, Moses Man of the Mountain; Paule Marshall, Praisesong for the Widow; Ishmael Red, Mumbo Jumbo; John Edgar Wideman, Sent for You Yesterday.
updated 2006-02-20
