Description
Book SynopsisThe eighteenth century witnessed an influx of black women to the slave-trading ports of the American Northeast. This book is an account of pre-Emancipation writings from the period of 1760 to 1863, in light of a developing African American religious culture and emerging free black communities.
Trade Review"Spiritual Interrogations marks a change in the very direction of the multiple academic disciplines that intersect at black (women's) studies."--Joycelyn Moody, Hamilton College, Signs
Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction3Ch. 1The Daughters' Arrival: Histories, Theories, Vernaculars10Ch. 2Diaspora Subjectivity and Transatlantic Crossings: Phillis Wheatley's Poetics of Recovery28Ch. 3"The Too Advent'rous Strain": Slavery, Conversion, and Poetic Empowerment in Phillis Wheatley's Elegies58Ch. 4"Social Piety" in Ann Plato's Essays71Ch. 5"I Took a Text": Itinerancy, Community, and Intertextuality in Jarena Lee's Spiritual Narratives87Ch. 6Rituals of Desire: Spirit, Culture, and Sexuality in the Writings of Rebecca Cox Jackson108Ch. 7Performing Community: Culture, Community, and African American Subjectivity before Emancipation127Afterword: The Sacred Subject140Notes143Selected Bibliography165Index177
