I’ll learn to write so that it will be read because it’s true and perhaps now and then with a streak of beauty - Ralph Ellison
How Scripture Speaks to the Black Experience
Nearly every book is a part of an ongoing conversation.
Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope steps into the dialogue around a question that has raged since enslaved Africans arrived on North American soil: to what degree is the Bible—and its message—really good news for black people in this life?
Chadwick Boseman’s Sacrifice
One of the more memorable moments of my adult life is indebted to Chadwick Boseman.
Watching Black Panther with my mother—an immigrant from Cote D’Ivoire in West Africa—is a memory I’ll always treasure. Upon seeing how deeply authentic the film was in its African heritage—from Boseman’s accent to the immaculately traditional attire—my mother uttered with pride and surprise, “So Hollywood really made a movie about Africans like me.”
The Power and Necessity of African American Literature
When my white friends ask me what to read about racial injustice in America, I always include novels.
Of course, theological and historical works are critical. But good literature has an almost unmatched power to spark empathetic and imaginative possibilities in our mind and hearts. Good literature invites us, through our imagination, to incarnate in the story of another for the sake of understanding, radical Jesus-like love, and solidarity.