“This is a marvelous and sustained discussion of
‘faithful vision’ and its significant influence
on African American literature.”—American
Literature
In Faithful Vision, James W. Coleman places under
his critical lens a wide array of African American novels
written during the last half of the twentieth century. In
doing so, he demonstrates that religious vision not only informs
black literature but also serves as a foundation for black
culture generally. The Judeo-Christian tradition, according
to Coleman, is the primary component of the African American
spiritual perspective, though its syncretism with voodoo/hoodoo—a
religion transported from West Africa through the West Indies
and New Orleans to the rest of black America—also figures
largely. Reviewing novels written mainly since 1950 by writers
including James Baldwin, Randall Kenan, Toni Morrison, John
Edgar Wideman, Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor, Erna Brodber,
and Ishmael Reed, among others, Coleman explores how black
authors have addressed the relevance of faith, especially
as it relates to an oppressive Christian tradition. He shows
that their novels—no matter how critical of the sacred
or supernatural, or how skeptical the characters’ viewpoints—ultimately
never reject the vision of faith. With its focus on religious
experience and tradition and its wider discussion of history,
philosophy, gender, and postmodernism, Faithful Vision
brings a bold critical dimension to African American literary
studies.
“An insightful interrogation of the complexities of
religious discourse in the African American literary tradition.
Because it superbly translates complex spiritual ethos into
literary tradition, this remarkable book is a must for anyone
interested in intersections of the sacred and the secular
in black cultural productions.” —Southern
Literary Journal
“Faithful Vision both looks intently into
faith and shows us how to look.”—Christianity
and Literature
James W. Coleman is the author of Blackness and
Modernism: The Literary Career of John Edgar Wideman and
Black Male Fiction and the Legacy of Caliban, which
was a Choice Outstanding Academic Title. He is a professor
of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
where he teaches African American and American literature.
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