Focusing on the representations of spiritual crisis in
twentieth-century African American fiction and autobiography, Qiana
J. Whitted asks how some of the most distinguished writers of this
tradition wrestle with the inexplicable nature of God and the
experience of unmerited natural and moral sufferings such as racial
oppression. Although this spiritual and existential dilemma of "the
problem of evil" is not unique to African Americans, writers such
as Countee Cullen, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Ernest Gaines,
Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison offer paradigmatic examples of it
in black life and culture after World War I. Whitted argues that
these spiritual struggles so often articulated through the cry for
divine justice are central to an understanding of modern black
literary engagements with religion. Chapters explore the discourse
of religious doubt and questioning through the crucified black
Christ and the mourner's bench tropes, womanist spiritual
infidelity, and the humanist improvisations of blues
narratives.
For too long, the author contends, literary critics have
explained this suffering through platitudes of endurance and
communal redemption, valorizing problematic notions of unquestioned
faith and self-sacrifice. By questioning what is at stake for
African Americans who call for divine justice, Whitted challenges
the assumptions about African American religiosity by revealing an
alternative tradition of narrative dissent and philosophical
engagement. In doing so, she broadens the horizons of critical
inquiry in black literary and cultural studies.
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