"Provocative . . . articulates the significance of embodied, erotic spirituality to black woman subjectivity and empowerment."--Tulsa reports in Women's Literature

"Sets out to reclaim the perfect of black girls to their sexual and erotic expression untainted by means of the stereotypes and disparagements that experience traditionally restrained them."--African American Review

"Captures the most hard matters of students who have interaction black women's literature, tradition, and concept: the continued quest to find a sort of black girl sexual company that neither withers within the cold lake of sexual repression nor explodes within the warmth of hypersexual stereotypes."--MELUS: magazine of the Society for the examine of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States

"Successfully undertakes an research of the way black ladies writers have used overlapping narrative depictions of sexuality and spirituality to recast the denigrated black lady physique and rewrite an empowered and completely actualized black lady subject."--Candice M. Jenkins, writer of personal Lives, right family: Regulating Black Intimacy

"Weir-Soley speaks with an expert that comes from actual wisdom of, funding in, and a focus to the main points of the African cosmologies and textual complexities she unearths."--Carine Mardorossian, SUNY-Buffalo

"The most unusual and demanding contributions are the usually very good readings of Morrison, Adisa, and Danticat. The paintings is riveting, either methodologically and critically."--Leslie Sanders, York University

Western eu mythology and historical past are likely to view spirituality and sexuality as contrary extremes. yet intercourse might be greater than a functionality of the physique and faith greater than a functionality of the brain, as exemplified within the works and characters of such writers as Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Opal Palmer Adisa, and Edwidge Danticat.

Donna Weir-Soley builds at the paintings of earlier students who've pointed out the ways in which black women's narratives usually include a sort of spirituality rooted in African cosmology, which continuously grounds their characters' self-empowerment and quest for autonomy. What she provides to the dialogue is an emphasis at the significance of sexuality within the improvement of black lady subjectivity, starting with Hurston's Their Eyes have been staring at God and carrying on with into modern black women's writings.

Writing in a transparent, lucid, and easy variety, Weir-Soley helps her thesis with shut readings of assorted texts, together with Hurston's Their Eyes have been gazing God and Morrison's loved. She unearths how those writers spotlight the interaction among the religious and the sexual via non secular symbols present in Voudoun, Santeria, Condomble, Kumina, and Hoodoo. Her arguments are relatively persuasive in providing another version for black lady subjectivity.