Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
In this collection, continental and diasporan African women interrogate the concept "sacred text" and analyze ways oral and written religious "texts" intersect with violence against African-descended women and girls. While the sanctioned idea of a sacred text is written literature, this project interrupts that conception by drawing attention to speech and other embodied practices that have sacral authority within the social imaginary. As a volume focused on religion and violence, essays in this collection analyze religions' authorization of violence against women and girls; contest the legitimacy of some religious "texts"; and affirm other writing, especially memoir, as redemptive. Unraveling and Reweaving Sacred Canon in Africana Womanhood arises from three years of conversation of continental and diasporan women, most recently continued in the July 6-10, 2014 Consultation of African and African Disaporan Women in Religion and Theology and privileges experiences and contexts of continental and diasporan African women and girls. Interlocutors include African traditionalists, Christian Protestants and Catholics, Muslims, and women embodying hybrid practices of these and other traditions.
Synopsis
Unraveling and Reweaving Sacred Canon in Africana Womanhood, a pioneering collection of essays by continental and diasporan African women, emerges from conversations about black female wellbeing and religious ideas in oral, written, and embodied forms. Through essays that affirm words and practices that enhance women's lives, contributors challenge traditional conceptions of sacred texts to untangle beneficial statements and uses of religious ideas from harmful patterns of employing religion and religious texts to diminish, disempower, and subjugate women and girls.