Reading Between the Lines: The Bible in the African American Neo-Slave Narrative

Authors

  • Katherine Clay Bassard Virginia Commonwealth University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.11157/rsrr4-2-568

Keywords:

King James Bible, slavery, African American literature, hermeneutics, neo-slave narrative

Abstract

With a focus on Edward P. Jones’s The Known World (2003), James McBride’s Song Yet Sung (2008), and Toni Morrison’s A Mercy (2003), the article examines how neo-slave narratives frame their discussions of the past in order to define future debates about race, culture, and academic politics. It is in looking back that these novels, ironically, carry forward the discussion of enslaved and free identities in biblical and extra-biblical contexts. Contemporary African American writers who situate their texts in the antebellum south are therefore shown to perform an important archival, hermeneutic, and cultural work.

Author Biography

  • Katherine Clay Bassard, Virginia Commonwealth University
    Department of English, Professor and Chair

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Published

2014-12-31

Issue

Vol. 4 No. 2 (2014)

Section

Articles

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How to Cite

Reading Between the Lines: The Bible in the African American Neo-Slave Narrative. (2014). Relegere: Studies in Religion and Reception, 4(2), 159–75. https://doi.org/10.11157/rsrr4-2-568