Stepping out on faith: Representing spirituality in African American literature from the Harlem Renaissance to the Civil Rights Movement

This dissertation examines how African American writers experience faith in a society that has historically devalued their humanity and intellectual abilities. It calls for a new understanding of the unique obstacles blacks face in expressing their spirituality in America and points to a variety of secular and sacred practices that can mitigate those challenges and promote creativity. Working within the interpretive lens of African American literary criticism and African American religious studies, the central question of my dissertation asks, what were the forces that shaped African American religiosity in the interwar period and beyond?;I argue that phenomena such as ecstasy and charisma not only enable African Americans to express themselves as spiritual beings outside of the church but also provide them a space to assert their humanity and affirm their existence. This study traces the literary representation of spirituality in African American communities through the modernist works of Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, and James Baldwin. I show how black women in Hurston's Mules and Men and Their Eyes Were Watching God use spaces such as the porch and the courtroom to fashion new spiritual constructs and alternative understandings of self and community through storytelling. I continue to explore ecstasy and charisma by arguing that the protagonists of Ellison's Invisible Man and Juneteenth forged a reality and spiritual life that was not solely predicated on the existence of God. I argue that black oral traditions such as preaching and testifying contributed to charismatic fervor and ecstatic tendencies found among African Americans during the post-World War II period. From there, I position Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain and The Fire Next Time as texts that utilize the interiority of the storefront church and the chaos of the city streets and the built environment to highlight the dynamics of charismatic behavior and ecstatic expression. I conclude my study with a brief reflection about what African American spirituality means in the Age of Obama, examining how the literature of Hurston, Ellison and Baldwin may be read in the context 21st century popular culture.