Spirit In The Dark

Most of the major black literary and cultural movements of the twentieth century have been understood and interpreted as secular secularizing and at times profane. In this book Josef Sorett demonstrates that religion was actually a formidable force within these movements animating and organizing African American literary visions throughout the years between the New Negro Renaissance of the 1920s and the Black Arts movement of the 1960s. Sorett unveils the contours of a literary history that remained preoccupied with religion even as it was typically understood by authors readers and critics alike to be modern and therefore secular. Spirit in the Dark offers an account of the ways in which religion especially Afro-Protestantism remained pivotal to the ideas and aspirations of African American literature across much of the twentieth century. From the dawn of the New Negro Renaissance until the ascendance of the Black Arts movement black writers developed a spiritual grammar for discussing race and art by drawing on terms such as church and spirit that were part of the landscape and lexicon of American religious history. Sorett demonstrates that religion and spirituality have been key categories for identifying and interpreting what was (or was not) perceived to constitute or contribute to black literature and culture. By examining figures and movements that have typically been cast as secular he offers theoretical insights that trouble the boundaries of what counts as sacred in scholarship on African American religion and culture. Ultimately Spirit in the Dark reveals religion to be an essential ingredient albeit one that was always questioned and contested in the forging of an African American literary tradition.