Colored women sittin' on high : womanist sermonic practice in literature and music / Melanie R. Hill.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hill, Melanie R., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Womanist theology.

African American women clergy.

Sermons--History and criticism.

Sermons.

Sermons in literature.

African American women in literature.

American literature--African American authors--History and criticism.

American literature.

African Americans--Music--History and criticism.

African Americans.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (321 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam, The Netherlands : The University of North Carolina Press, [2025]

Summary:

"From blue-note turmoil to grace-note power, Black women preachers stand tall. In Colored Women Sittin' on High, Melanie R. Hill offers a new perspective on the art of the sermon in African American literature, music, and theology. Drawing on the womanist cadence of Alice Walker in literature and the rhythmical flow of named womanist theologians, Hill makes interventions at the intersections of African American literary criticism, music, and religious studies. Pushing against the patriarchal dominance that often exists in religious spaces, Hill argues that Black women's religious practice creates a 'sermonic space' that thrives inside and outside the church, allowing for a critique of sexism and anti-Black racism. She examines literature by writers such as Zora Neale Hurston and James Baldwin, music by Aretha Franklin and Ms. Lauryn Hill, and sermons by theologians Ruby Sales and Vashti M. McKenzie, and she takes readers into a sermonic artwork of artists, preachers, and freedom movement activists who are, as Hill contends, the greatest 'virtuosic alchemists' of our time"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Cover

Half Title

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Contents

List of Illustrations

When the Preachers Dance

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

CHAPTER 1. Left-Handed Sermons in a Right-Handed World: Pauli Murray, Quadruple-Consciousness, and the Art of the Sermon in African American Literature

CHAPTER 2. "A Womanist Vibe with a Blues Sensibility": Disrupting Heaven Through Sermon and Song in Their Eyes Were Watching God

CHAPTER 3. "Armed with the Word and Shaped by the Blues": Toward a Womanist Hermeneutic of Regeneration in The Amen Corner and Just Above My Head

CHAPTER 4. Tongues on Fire: Black Women and the Making of Sermonic Space

CHAPTER 5. We, Too, Preach Freedom: A Symphony of Sermonic Sound

CHAPTER 6. "Sound Falls 'Round Me Like Rain": Toward a Womanist Sermonic Aesthetic in the Sermon-Songs of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Aretha Franklin, Shirley Caesar, Jill Scott, Ursula Rucker, and Ms. Lauryn Hill

Coda

When the Women Preach

Who Are We?

Glossary of Musicological Terms

Notes

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-4696-8746-1

1-4696-8511-6

OCLC:

1517830003