What is spirituality? Houston
Baker calls it "spirit work," which involves prophecy,
healing, discernment; writers who express spirituality in literature
also pass on this spirituality to their readers (76). Conjuring
is another word for spirit work. The conjurer has the power of
communicating with spirits of the dead. Conjurers are in and out
of time and transport us into the space-time conventions of
traditional African religions.
Dona Marimba Richards defines spirituality
in her book Let the Circle Be Unbroken: The Implications of African
Spirituality in the Diaspora. According to Richards,
spirituality relates to the African idea of a spiritually centered
cosmos. It is the spirituality of African Americans, she
believes, that gave them the survival strategies to make it through
slavery and its aftermath.
Gloria Wade-Gayles views spirituality as a
practical side of African American life. She remembers her
mother when she was a child:
"I
thought my mother's daily list-making a boring routine, a
mere habit rooted in her penchant for organization. But when
I became a woman and, as the Scripture says, 'put away
childish things,' I realized that the activity was part of a
spiritual ritual: first the lists, then the meditation, and
before turning off the light, the prayers." (1)
In Sisters of the Yam bell
hooks points out that writing has always been a part of the healing
process for her. Writing is for her "the work of the
spirit" (183). Hooks also argues that spiritual power can
come from the literary voices of black women writers, through
"other black women speaking to me through their creation of
imaginative literature and through their essays"
(190).
In this multimedia project, questions and exercises
will demonstrate how the authors use literary elements (style, theme,
language, and characterization) and the repetition of African folk
traditions and religious beliefs to express spirituality in the texts.
Works Cited:
Baker, Houston. Workings of the Spirit:
The Poetics of Afro-American Women's Writing. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1991.
hooks, bell. Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and
Self-Recovery. Boston: South
End Press, 1993.
Richards, Dona Marimba. Let the Circle
Be Unbroken: The Implications of African Spirituality in the
Diaspora. New York: Greenwood Press, 1985.
Wade-Gayles, Gloria, ed. My Soul Is a
Witness. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995.
