I knew I wanted to write a post on Black literature. Authors like James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and Octavia Butler have shaped the way I view the world, including my faith, but I originally struggled with articulating exactly how. Black literature is so diverse and I didn’t want to oversimplify an entire genre. Then I heard Danté Stewart talk about Black literature on an episode of the Faith for Normal People podcast. He spoke about how in both the Bible and contemporary literature, people in relationship with God can be found conversing and wrestling with God:
“You’re reading the unfolding of this story [in the Bible], this divine story, whereby a people have a relationship and conversation with God, and they wrestle with God, and they live with God, and they live in their world … And in both of those instances, whether it’s the sacred texts of the Bible, or whether it’s the sacred texts of Black literature, or even other literature, I realized that there is something that I hear that helps me better understand my own story.”1
I’m still not sure I’ll be able to communicate just how important these books have been to my faith. It’s one of those things that I can feel, but can’t explain adequately in words. And I certainly can’t connect the same way Stewart connects to these stories, but they have absolutely opened my mind and heart to different ways of experiencing the world. From the complicated relationship between the protagonist and Christianity in James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain to Baby Suggs’ brilliant sermon in Toni Morrison’s Beloved to Octavia Butler’s characterization of God in The Parable of the Sower, my faith has been shaped by these stories.
In Beloved, the protagonist’s mother-in-law, a formerly enslaved woman who became a spiritual leader in her free community around Cincinnati, preached a sermon in the woods. It’s unlike any sermon I’ve heard before. It’s not about the Bible, or doctrine, or even morality. It’s about loving oneself when few else will. In opening, Morrison writes: “She told them that the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine. That if they could not see it, they would not have it.”
“‘Here,’ she said, ‘in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don’t love your eyes; they’d just as soon pick em out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face ’cause they don’t love that either. You got to love it, you! And no, they ain’t in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again. What you say out of it they will not heed. What you scream from it they do not hear. What you put into it to nourish your body they will snatchaway and give you leavins instead. No, they don’t love your mouth. You got to love it. This is flesh I’m talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance; backs that need support; shoulders that need arms, strong arms I’m telling you. And O my people, out yonder, hear me, they do not love your neck unnoosed and straight. So love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it and hold it up. And all your inside parts that they’d just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them. The dark, dark liver—love it, love it, and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet. More than lungs that have yet to draw free air. More than your lifeholding womb and your lifegiving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize.’ Saying no more, she stood up then and danced with her twisted hip the rest of what her heart had to say while the others opened their mouths and gave her the music. Long notes held until the four-part harmony was perfect enough for their deeply loved flesh.’” (p. 103-104)
In a world of injustice and oppression the “usual” sermon just won’t do. Folks need to be awakened to their own self-worth. That’s what Baby Suggs did for her community. In The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin writes that “If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.” (p. 47) Like Black liberation theology, Black literature has shown me the necessity of orthopraxy.
But Black literature doesn’t just highlight resistance in the face of the harmful effects of American racism. There’s joy, beauty, and hope in these texts. In Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, protagonist Lauren does experience discrimination based on her race, gender, and health, but she’s also a leader who saves a diverse group of people fleeing poverty and violence. And along the way, this “deconstructed” preacher’s kid spreads her very different view of God to her new acquaintances: “God is change.” As Monica Coleman points out in Making a Way Out of No Way Lauren’s view of God sounds a lot like process theology—a relational concept of God that centers God’s use of persuasion rather than coercion. Or, as Butler writes, “God exists to shape. And to be shaped.”
Perhaps Lauren’s view of God could have benefited Janie, the protagonist in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Zora Neale Hurston writes about the disconnect Janie feels between her “traditional” understanding of God and her lived experience.
“She looked hard at the sky for a long time. Somewhere up there beyond blue ether’s bosom sat He. Was He noticing what was going on around here? He must because he knew everything. Did he mean to do this thing to Tea Cake and her? It wasn’t anything she could fight. She could only ache and wait. Maybe it was some big tease and when He saw it had gone far enough He’d give her a sign. She looked hard for something up there to move for a sign. A star in the daytime, maybe, or the sun to shout, or even a mutter of thunder. Her arms went up in desperate supplication for a minute. It wasn’t exactly pleading, it was asking questions. The sky stayed hard looking and quiet so she went inside the house. God would do less than He had in His heart.” (p. 213)
Even if Janie adopted a typical Western notion of God, she’s unafraid to question why. Like Lauren, she has trouble reconciling the notion of an all-powerful God with the reality of her own suffering. The wrestling with “traditional,” “orthodox,” or wholly “transcendent” views of God (often depicted as a disconnected god “up there”) in these books have challenged my previous views. A God who is “down here” in relationship with people makes more sense than a God who is only “up there” refusing to stop evil. I imagine God in relationship with everything, working from within to make the world, in the words of Baldwin, “larger, freer, and more loving.”
Black literature’s privileging of experience when talking about God has influenced how I relate to the divine. Like the authors of scripture these authors lament, struggle, and question. But they also hope and insist on a better way of understanding God and being human.
https://thebiblefornormalpeople.com/episode-14-dante-stewart-the-power-of-black-literature/
Goodreads page where I track books I've read by Black authors