Let My People Live reengages the narrative of Exodus through a
critical, life-affirming Africana hermeneutic that seeks to create
and sustain a vision of not just the survival but the thriving of
Black communities. While the field of biblical studies has
habitually divided "objective" interpretations from culturally
informed ones, Kenneth Ngwa argues that doing interpretive work
through an activist, culturally grounded lens rightly recognizes
how communities of readers actively shape the priorities of any
biblical interpretation. In the Africana context, communities whose
identities were made disposable by the forces of empire and
colonialism-both in Africa and in the African diaspora across the
globe-likewise suffered the stripping away of the right to
interpretation, of both sacred texts and of themselves. Ngwa shows
how an Africana approach to the biblical text can intervene in this
narrative of breakage, as a mode of resistance. By emphasizing the
irreducible life force and resources nurtured in the Africana
community, which have always preceded colonial oppression, the
Africana hermeneutic is able to stretch from the past into the
future to sustain and support generations to come. Ngwa reimagines
the Exodus story through this framework, elaborating the motifs of
the narrative as they are shaped by Africana interpretative values
and approaches that identify three animating threats in the story:
erasure (undermining the community's very existence), alienation
(separating from the space of home and from the ecosystem), and
singularity (holding up the individual over the collective). He
argues that what he calls "badass womanism"-an intergenerational
and interregional life force and epistemology of the people
embodied in the midwives, Miriam, the Egyptian princess, and other
female figures in the story-have challenged these threats. He shows
how badass womanist triple consciousness creates, and is informed
by, communal approaches to hermeneutics that emphasize survival
over erasure, integration over alienation, and multiplicity over
singularity. This triple consciousness surfaces throughout the
Exodus narrative and informs the narrative portraits of other
characters, including Moses and Yahweh. As the Hebrew people
navigate the exodus journey, Ngwa investigates how these forces of
oppression and resistance shift and take new shapes across the
geographies of Egypt, the wilderness, and the mountain area
preceding their passage into the promised land. For Africana, these
geographies also represent colonial, global, and imperial sites
where new subjectivities and epistemologies develop.
General
Imprint: |
Westminster/John Knox Press,U.S.
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
April 2022 |
First published: |
2022 |
Authors: |
Kenneth N. Ngwa
|
Dimensions: |
229 x 152mm (L x W) |
Format: |
Paperback
|
Pages: |
320 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-664-26259-4 |
Categories: |
Books
|
LSN: |
0-664-26259-7 |
Barcode: |
9780664262594 |
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