Cover of Conversions and visions in the writings of African-American women

Conversions and visions in the writings of African-American women

Conversions and Visions in the Writings of African-American Women is a cultural study of the ways in which religion and literature have collaborated to promote self-affirmation among African-American women. From nineteenth-century autobiography to twentieth-century fiction, Kimberly Rae Connor explores the ancestral influence of religion and literature on African-American women's creative development and writings, offering new insights into the authors, their works, and their effect on society.

Read more

Drawing upon literary theory, women's studies, and religious studies, Connor expands the categories by which African-American writings are traditionally read. Using the concept of "religious conversion" as a paradigm, Connor examines an African-American woman's achievement of selfhood as a unique experience characterized more by a turning toward and embracing of self than by a turning away from sin.

The subsequent achievement of selfhood is then based on the interplay of individual and community identities. Connor suggests that the distinctiveness of African-American women's experiences and writings can transcend their immediate communities and be brought to bear on women's experiences in general, making their individual stories more accessible and meaningful to the whole of humankind.

Audience
adult
Length
medium · 317 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it. Point at it (on a phone, tap it) for less of it instead.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked Conversions and visions in the writings of African-American women? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked Conversions and visions in the writings of African-American women. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. Reconstructing womanhood Shares african american authors, women and literature, intellectual life
  2. Black Women Writers, 1950-1980 Shares african american authors, women and literature, intellectual life
  3. Katie's canon Shares african american authors, women and literature, intellectual life
  4. Mother imagery in the novels of Afro-Caribbean women Shares african american authors, women and literature, intellectual life

“If you want more of the same, start with these.”

  1. Don't Explain
  2. Desire
  3. Bad behavior
  4. Writing the Black Revolutionary Diva: Women's Subjectivity and the Decolonizing Text

“If it was the african american authors that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. Pauline E. Hopkins
  2. No crystal stair
  3. Arms akimbo
  4. Black Professional Women in Recent American Fiction

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. Nineteenth-Century American Women Write Religion
  2. Voice of Her Own: Women and the Journal Writing Journey
  3. The Problem with Interreligious Dialogue
  4. Women's work