CONTENTS

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. CONTENTS vii
3. Introduction. Life Under the Baobab Tree: Africana Studies and Religion in a Transitional Age 1
4. PART I
5. UN/FOLDING IDENTITIES 23
6. 1. Nella Larsen’s Quicksand: Mourning through Biracial Identities 29
7. 2. Body as Praxis: Disarticulating the Human from Ownership and Property 57
8. 3. What It’s Like to Be a Blackened Body, and Why It’s Like That: A Preliminary Exploration 75
9. 4. The Rhizome and/as the Tree of Life: The Relational Poetics of Wisdom and Decolonizing Biblical Studies 92
10. 5. Senghorian Négritude and Postcolonial Biblical Criticism 126
11. PART II
12. AFRICANA ACTIVISM 171
13. 6. God Killed! God Interrupted, Long Live the People!: Political Theory in Religious Act 173
14. 7. “Doing the Will of God” as Loving God Whose Way Is Peace 195
15. 8. Mysticism and Mothering in Black Women’s Social Justice Activism: Brazil/USA 223
16. 9. A Theopoetics of Exodus and the Africana Spirit in Music 235
17. 10. Must We Burn Isaac?: A Four-Part Hermeneutical Fantasy for Africana Epistemology 250
18. PART III
19. AFRICANA HISTORIOGRAPHIES AND MEMORIES 273
20. 11. From White Man’s Magic to Black Folks’ Wisdom 275
21. 12. Solidarity by Sharing Power: An Inculturated Organic Storytelling of Jonah and Mami Wata 307
22. 13. Envisioning Africana Religions: Seeking a Distinctive Voice for the Study of Religions in Africa and the African Diaspora 328
23. 14. Interpreting from the Back/Black-Side: Exodus through the Shawl of Memory 355
24. 15. Conjuring Lost Books: (Re-)membering Fragmented Litanies at the Intersection of Africana and Biblical Studies 400
25. Afterword 409
26. List of Contributors 413
27. Index of Modern Authors 419
28. Index of Ancient Documents 427