Imagining Grace: Liberating Theologies in the Slave Narrative Tradition (review)

Kimberly Connor's Imagining Grace unveils the far-reaching importance of theological aesthetics to the American slave narrative tradition and its many descendents. Connor's work fills the narrow but significant gap between the aesthetic commitments that inform the work of literary critics Joseph Brown, William Andrews, and Robert Stepto and the theological arguments of James Cone and Dwight Hopkins. While balancing the artistic narrative form of ex-slaves with the overt political initiatives of black theology, Connor's study of the legacy of slave narratives invites us to shift the focus of scholarly fascination from the debilitating effects of racism and scenes of subjection to the undervalued and neglected concepts of imaginative creation and transformation.

Connor's readings disclose a formal intersubjectivity, a nexus between author and reader in slave narratives that crystallizes in the formation of various modern and postmodern American cultural voices. The trajectory of this creative imagination absorbs its audience in moral struggle that aims to extend its reach from private space into public social reality and practice. This thematic structure emerges from within the slave narratives and manifests itself throughout other artistic performances that Connor describes as "liberation theologies," which sing freedom and articulate social advancement through a myriad of sociopolitical American voices as they attempt to critique, challenge, and transform their conditions. Although literary critics tend to confine the influence of slave narratives to African American texts, Connor unremittingly extends that influence, discussing not only Richard Wright's Black Boy and Ernest Gaines's The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman but also the performance pieces of Anna Deveare Smith, the jazz selections of Charles Haden, and the visual art of Glenn Ligon. Each exemplifies a liberation theology that initially emerged within the autobiographies of ex-slaves.

Three central claims generate the force of Connor's analysis. Connor first argues that theological scholars typically neglect the imaginative aesthetic dimensions of slave narratives, ignoring their artistic complexity. Her second claim, piggybacking on the initial critique of theological discourse, is that theological analyses too often limit themselves to Judeo-Christian revelation and scripture, instead of expanding their range of inquiry to include secular history and culture. This secular-nonsecular distinction that plagues much of theological discourse and literary criticism is an intricate one that Connor negotiates effectively. Finally, she shows us how the religious potency of the slave narrative tradition extends beyond Christianity and beyond racialized blackness. She engages the performative acts of whites like Haden, whose clever recording of "Steal Away" evokes the spirit of struggle. Haden appropriates an African American cultural trope, but his performances indicate that this trope can and must be embraced multiculturally. Here, Connor makes a vital point: secular forms of drama and music practiced by non–African Americans or, more importantly, people without noticeable slave ancestry, can also be deeply committed to the imaginative transformation found in slave narratives and to reenvisioning social change through aesthetics.

When Connor pairs Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison in the chapter "Affirming the Unity," she practices some unifying work of her own, using Ellison's essays to corroborate Wright's endeavors. Of course, at least since the essays of Irving Howe, these authors have been understood as foils, nowadays more at Wright's expense. Thus, Connor's employment of Ellison to support her claims about the compelling testimony of Wright's Twelve Million Black Voices is all the more significant. This critical move is indicative of several subtle negotiations of oppositions in contemporary scholarly discussions that create a provocative subtextual level to the book.

Despite my enthusiasm for Connor's work, there are some spaces in the book that could be addressed by critics who are inspired by what the book accomplishes and also wish to improve upon it. For instance, part of the book's contribution to American studies is that it expands literary critical analyses...