Publication: 2023
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
A compelling exploration of how nineteenth-century Black women writers used spirituality and travel to claim freedom, movement, and power.
This post is part of the
Books in Brief series, which features concise conversations with scholars about their books in African American literary studies.
1. What inspired you to pursue the lines of research and writing that resulted in this book?
Spirit Deep began with my love of spiritual autobiography but was deeply informed by my fascination with Black women's travel. I was amazed at the mobility of Black women spiritual autobiographers and the extent of their travels especially during a time when most African American women were either enslaved or living in contexts that made such travel unlikely or even impossible. I was looking for a book that took seriously Black women's spirituality and travel but couldn't find that book, so I wrote it.
2. What surprised you most during your research or writing process?
I am most surprised by the evolution of the book to include such a variety of genres (biblical narrative, spiritual autobiography, travel narrative, film) that extend beyond a single historical period. Because of the cover of the book, readers may be surprised that Spirit Deep isn't just about nineteenth century Black women writers, and I hope they learn the value of reading across time periods and discover how the stories we tell about the past informs our present.
3. What was the hardest decision you had to make while writing this book?
The hardest decision I made was scrapping an entire chapter and giving myself permission to begin again. While I struggled with writer’s block throughout the first draft of Chapter four, the second version that I wrote practically wrote itself because I invited my whole self into the writing process—not just my college-educated mind but also the deep knowing and wisdom that I inherited from generations of Black women before me. Surrendering the first draft was hard but once I released it, writing became easier.
4. What's one lesson you learned while producing this book that you'll carry into future projects?
Trust what I know and how I know it. This practice enabled me to access a true and fuller voice in my writing and, when it came time to engage with external critical voices and readers (reviewers and editors), it was easier to ensure my voice and deep (interior) knowing remained in conversation with those readers rather than eclipsed by their feedback. This interior grounding ensured that the final decisions about the book were my own and not just externally driven.
5. If any come to mind, are there books in African American literary studies that you see your work in conversation with?
Saidyia Hartman’s Lose Your Mother (2007)
Toni Morrison, “Site of Memory” and “On Beloved” from The Sources of Self-Regard (2019)
Alice Walker’s In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens (1983)
Deborah McDowell’s Recovering the Black Female Body (2001)
P. Gabrielle Foreman’s Activist Sentiments (2009)
The common thread across all these texts, which I found myself returning to often, is recovery. As a nineteenth-century scholar of African American literature this isn’t surprising. Reading across these critical texts enabled me to develop an analysis of recovery practices that expands beyond the recovery of Black women’s bodies and bodies of written work to consider the recovery of their interior (spiritual) lives as well. More, it informed my understanding of Black women writers’ recovery work as not only secular and imaginative (creative) practice, but also as spiritual (sacred) practice.
