Lenten Edition: Voices of Black Female Mystics
Week 1: February 17-24, Listening to Sojourner Truth
Biography: Born into slavery in 1797 in New York, Sojourner Truth escaped to freedom with her infant daughter in 1826. She was an activist for women’s rights in general, and black women’s rights in particular. A towering figure who was tied to nineteenth-century movements for abolition and women’s suffrage, this justice-seeking sage advanced the legal, political, and economic rights for black women of her time. Her life and her faith are sources of inspiration in the work of freedom that continues today.
To learn more about Sojourner Truth’s life, tour the online exhibit at the National Women’s History Museum.
The Narrative of Sojourner Truth differs from many of the much-read slave narratives of the time because it was set in the North. Sojourner Truth herself did not write, so much of what we have, including this narrative from 1850, comes from those who listened to her voice and who offer it to us. Historian and artist Nell Irvin Painter offers a helpful analysis of the work of those who have listened to Sojourner Truth and reflected it back to us in her introduction and notes for the Penguin Books edition of The Narrative.
Week 2: February 25-March 3, Listening to Sister Thea Bowman
Biography: Thea Bowman was a Roman Catholic religious sister, teacher, and scholar who made a major contribution to the ministry of the Catholic Church toward her fellow African Americans. She became a great evangelist, assisted in the production of an African American Catholic hymnal, and was a popular speaker on faith and spirituality in her final years. She helped found the National Black Sisters Conference to provide support for African-American women in Catholic religious institutes.
Almost Home: Thea on Living with Suffering and Death
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhu-IujT_GA
Address to US Catholic Bishops
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOV0nQkjuoA
“Thea Bowman In My Own Words,” Maurice J. Nutt, C. Ss.R. Liguori. 2009
“Thea’s Song,” Smith, Charlene and Feister, John. Orbis Books. 2009. Winner Christopher Award Biography March 2010. Winner Catholic Press Association Award Biography June 2010
“This Little Light: Lessons in Living from Sister Thea Bowman,” McGrath, Michael O’Neill., Orbis Books, 2008
“To Stand on the Rock – Meditations on Black Catholic Identity,” Brown, SJ, Joseph A. . Orbis Books. 1998.
Week 3: March 4-10, Listening to Fannie Lou Hamer
Embodied Wordplay: the Practical Theology of Fannie Lou Hamer
Born the twentieth child to a family of Mississippi sharecroppers, Fannie Lou Hamer grew up hearing the good news preached at home and from her Baptist minister father’s pulpit each Sunday. By age 13, Hamer had left formal schooling to support her aging parents, picking hundreds of loud of cotton while living with polio. In her young adulthood she participated in community organizing and activism through involvement with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Southern Christian Leadership Conferences. Her experiences with racist voting laws, racist neighbors, and forced sterilization all contributed to her powerful, prophetic voice. While she is known at large for her speech at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, Hamer’s lifetime of advocating for all of God’s children deserves exploration.
Richard Johnson. Interview with Fannie Lou Hamer (1968), 2017.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nhu_uxRR2og .
Team Epsy. Fannie Lou Hamer’s Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party Speech | 1964 DNC Convention, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agBzy3ATja0 .
1. “Fannie Lou Hamer | American Experience | PBS.” Accessed February 10, 2021.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/freedomsummer-hamer/ .
2. Menya Cole. Voice of Freedom Fannie Lou Hamer Read Aloud – Voting Rights – Civil Rights, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MF-4xKmHiSo . (for families with children!)
3. Hamer, Fannie Lou, Maegan Parker Brooks, and Davis W. Houck. The Speeches of Fannie Lou Hamer: To Tell It like It Is. Margaret Walker Alexander Series in African American
Studies. Jackson, Miss: University Press of Mississippi, 2011.
“Until I Am Free, You Are Not Free Either,” Speech Delivered at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, January 1971 (p. 121-130)
“We Haven’t Arrived Yet,” Presentation and Responses to Questions at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, January 29, 1976 (p. 181-193)
Week 4: March 11-17, Listening to Jarena Lee
Jarena Lee: The Liberated Subject
Jarena Lee was a nineteenth century African-American female preacher. Born into a free black family, Lee nonetheless experienced deep alienation and disclocation when she was hired out for labor as a child and separated from her family. She found her voice in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and she became one of the most compelling preachers of the Second Great Awakening. She was also the first African American woman to have an autobiography published in the United States.
About Jarena Lee’s printed works and how they broke contemporary conventions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcJmnDxi5Dg
Read Jarena Lee’s autobiography here: The Life and Religious Experience of Jarena Lee, a Coloured Lady
Week 5: March 18-24, Listening to Octavia E. Butler
All that You Touch You Change
She had an uncannily insightful way of reading the history and nature of human beings. This gift allowed Octavia E. Butler to write realistic, yet timely prophetic tales that transcended fiction and science-fiction genres. From a young age she pursued writing with all of her soul’s vigor, and dedicated her whole being to telling stories and creating worlds. Before becoming a full-time writer, Butler’s disciplined routine had her waking up at 2:30 in the morning to write until it was time for work. Some of the most recognized fruits of this labor include Kindred, Lilith’s Brood/Xenogenesis series, Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents, and Bloodchild: And Other Stories. In Parable of the Sower, a young woman living with hyperempathy plants the seeds of a new religion in a desolate and apocalyptic future United States. Though Butler was a self-professed and unapologetic hermit, many interviews can be found online. If you have a chance, listen to her deep and resonant voice speaking from the depths of her soul.
Artifact 1
Youtube TED-Ed video with overview of Octavia E. Butler and her works. https://youtu.be/X6YI8lsjJJA
Artifact 2
“All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
Is Change.
God
Is Change”
-From Parable of the Sower
Artifact 3
“I shall be a bestselling writer. After Imago, each of my books will be on the bestseller lists of LAT, NYT, PW, WP, etc. My novels will go onto the above lists whether publishers push them hard or not, whether I’m paid a high advance or not, whether I ever win another award or not.
This is my life. I write bestselling novels. My novels go onto the bestseller lists on or shortly after publication. My novels each travel up to the top of the bestseller lists and they reach the top and they stay on top for months . Each of my novels does this.
So be it! I will find the way to do this. See to it! So be it! See to it!
My books will be read by millions of people!
I will buy a beautiful home in an excellent neighborhood
I will send poor black youngsters to Clarion or other writer’s workshops
I will help poor black youngsters broaden their horizons
I will help poor black youngsters go to college
I will get the best of health care for my mother and myself
I will hire a car whenever I want or need to.
I will travel whenever and wherever in the world that I choose
My books will be read by millions of people!
So be it! See to it!”
-Handwritten note, 1988
__________________________
Artifact 4
Interview with Democracy Now! in 2005. At the end, Butler reads an excerpt from Parable of the Talents.
https://www.democracynow.org/2005/11/11/science_fiction_writer_octavia_butler_on