Faithful Vision

The Judeo-Christian tradition, according to Coleman, is the primary component of the African American spiritual perspective, though its syncretism with voodoo/hoodoo - a religion transported 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 Wideman, Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor, Erna Brodber, and Ishmael Reed, among others, Coleman explores how black authors have addressed the relevance of faith, especially 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.

• Author: James Wilmouth Coleman
• Publisher: LSU Press
• Published: 2006-01-01
• Pages: 252