Home as Sacrament: Blackness and Belonging in Modern America

In the summer of 2024, two friends and former colleagues at Duke University engaged in a dialogue about visions of home in African American cultural life and imagination. Prompted by Southern Cultures guest editors Blair LM Kelley and LeRhonda S. Manigault-Bryant, Professors Karla FC Holloway and Maurice O. Wallace mused on the nonplace of home, touching on race, class, history, environment, spirituality, and Indigeneity. Their unscripted exchange explored the definition of home as variable: Home is a familiar space, a place of shared memories; it is sanctuary and belonging; it evokes feelings of love, safety, kindness, and security. Home encompasses structure and architecture, kitchens and gardens, plants and wildlife. An expanded view takes into account a home's meaning and intention, and this view recalls the ancestral, the original people who lived in a particular location. The colleagues reflected that home allows a temporary occupancy in places that will change, and that the spirit of home might be transportable.