Description
From Zora Neale Hurston to Derek Walcott to Toni Morrison, New World black authors have written about African-derived religious traditions and spiritual practices. The Sacred Act of Reading examines religion and sociopolitical power in modern and contemporary texts of a variety of genres from the black Americas. By engaging with spiritual traditions such as Vodou, Kumina, and Protestant Christianity while drawing on canonical Eurocentric literary theory, Anne Margaret Castro presents a novel, nuanced reading of power through the physical and metaphysical relationships portrayed in these great works of New World black literature.
Castro examines prophecy in the dramas of Derek Walcott, preaching in the ethnography of Zora Neale Hurston, and liturgy in the novels of Toni Morrison, offering comparative readings alongside the works of Afro-Colombian anthropologist Manuel Zapata Olivella, Jamaican sociologist Erna Brodber, and Canadian fiction writer Nalo Hopkinson. The Sacred Act of Reading is the first book to bring together literary texts, historical and contemporary anthropological studies, theology, and critical theory to show how black authors in the Americas employ spiritual phenomena as theoretical frameworks for thinking within, against, and beyond structures of political dominance, dependence, and power.
Author: Anne Margaret Castro
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Published: 01/13/2020
Pages: 282
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.92lbs
Size: 9.02h x 5.98w x 0.64d
ISBN13: 9780813943459
ISBN10: 0813943450
BISAC Categories:
- Literary Criticism | Caribbean & Latin American
- Religion | Philosophy
- Literary Criticism | American | General
About the Author
Anne Margaret Castro is Assistant Professor of English at Florida International University.