Faithful Vision: Treatments of the Sacred, Spiritual, and Supernatural in Twentieth-Century African American Fiction

261 Pages·2006·1.32 MB·English

by  James W. Coleman

literary studies
“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 tradi-
tion, according to Coleman, is the primary component of the African American
spiritual perspective, though its syncretism with voodoo/hoodoo—a religion trans-
ported 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 Wide-
man, Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor, Erna Brodber, and Ishmael Reed, among others,
Coleman explores how black authors have addressed the relevance of faith, espe-
cially 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 Amer-
ican 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 in-
tersections 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 Modern-
ism: The Literary Career of John Edgar Wideman and Black Male
Fiction and the Legacy of Caliban, which was a Choice Outstand-
ing Academic Title. He is a professor of English at the Univer-
sity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he teaches African Press
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baton rouge 70808 Cover design, illustration, and type by Natalie F. Smith
www.lsu.edu/lsupress Printed in U.S.A.
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southern literary studies
fred hobson, editor
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fai t h fu l
v i s ion
treatments of the sacred,
spiritual, and supernatural
in twentieth-century
african american fiction
james w. coleman
louisiana state university press
baton rouge
Published by Louisiana State University Press
Copyright © 2005 by Louisiana State University Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Louisiana Paperback Edition, 2009
Designer: Andrew Shurtz
Typeface: Minion
Typesetter: G&S Typesetters, Inc.
library of congress
cataloging-in-publication data:
Coleman, James W. (James Wilmouth), 1946–
Faithful vision : treatments of the sacred, spiritual, and supernatural in
twentieth-century African American fiction / James W. Coleman.
p. cm.—(Southern literary studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 0-8071-3091-5 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. American fiction—African American authors—History and criticism. 2. Religion
and literature —United States—History—20th century. 3. American fiction—
20th century—History and criticism. 4. Religious fiction, American—History
and criticism. 5. African Americans in literature. 6. Spiritual life in literature.
7. Supernatural in literature. 8. Spiritualism in literature. 9. Holy, The, in literature.
10. Faith in literature. I. Title. II. Series.
ps374.n4c643 2005
813'.509382—dc22
isbn-13: 978-0-0871-3529-7 (paper : alk. paper)
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for
permanence and durability of the Committee on
Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the
Council on Library Resources.
∞
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contents
introduction · 1
Faithful Vision
Its Definition and Significance
in African American Culture and Fiction
chapter1 · 16
African American Faithful Belief
Imposing Social Determinism, Naturalism, and Modernism
chapter2 · 43
The Centrality of Religious Faith
Communal Acceptance, Textual Ambiguity, and Paradox
chapter3 · 77
Critiquing Christian Belief
The Text as Prophecy of Different Ways of Seeing Salvation
chapter4 · 118
Rejecting God and Redefining Faith
Portrayals of Black Women’s Spirituality
chapter5 · 156
Reshaping and Radicalizing Faith
The Diasporic Vision and Practice of Hoodoo
conclusion · 197
Fiction, Life, and Faithful Vision
Final Thoughts on Its Overall Portrayal and Relevance
notes · 205
bibliography · 233
index · 245
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faithful
vision
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introduction
Faithful Vision
Its Definition and Significance in
African American Culture and Fiction
religious and biblical traditions that engender faith are arguably
the most important cultural feature to African Americans, and therefore also
to African American writers who write about black culture. However, de-
spite the large amount of recent theoretical and philosophical work that ad-
dresses religion, critics who write about black novels seldom deal with
religious and biblical traditions in fiction. It is interesting, for example, how
often commentators have denied the seriousness of the treatment of the
Bible and Christian faith in James Baldwin’sGo Tell It on the Mountain(1953)
and how many others just ignore it and write about different aspects of the
text.1Perhaps not all black writers incorporate the Bible in some important
way into their fiction, following the cultural pattern in which black people
make it an integral part of life communally and individually, but black nov-
els reveal that most writers with a significant opus explore the Bible as a
dominant part of some text. Yet no study of African American fiction deeply
examines how religious tradition based on faith and centrally bound in the
Bible manifests itself in a significant number of novels from the late twenti-
eth century, when black writers had the freedom and formal resources to
portray the tradition as complexly as possible. Perhaps critics of African
American fiction are too insulated and concerned largely with the critical
discourses holding sway in the academy, reminiscent of how mid-twentieth-
century writers like Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison focused on main-
stream literary traditions to establish themselves. These academic discourses
do not necessarily preclude a cultural analysis showing that faith stemming
1