Colored Women Sittin' on High - by Melanie R Hill

About the Book

"From blue-note turmoil to grace-note power, Black women preachers stand tall. In Colored Women Sittin' on High, Melanie R. Hill offers a new perspective on the art of the sermon in African American literature, music, and theology. Drawing on the womanist cadence of Alice Walker in literature and the rhythmical flow of named womanist theologians, Hill makes interventions at the intersections of African American literary criticism, music, and religious studies. Pushing against the patriarchal dominance that often exists in religious spaces, Hill argues that Black women's religious practice creates a 'sermonic space' that thrives inside and outside the church, allowing for a critique of sexism and anti-Black racism. She examines literature by writers such as Zora Neale Hurston and James Baldwin, music by Aretha Franklin and Ms. Lauryn Hill, and sermons by theologians Ruby Sales and Vashti M. McKenzie, and she takes readers into a sermonic artwork of artists, preachers, and freedom movement activists who are, as Hill contends, the greatest 'virtuosic alchemists' of our time"--

Book Synopsis

From blue-note turmoil to grace-note power, Black women preachers stand tall. In Colored Women Sittin' on High, Melanie R. Hill offers a new perspective on the art of the sermon in African American literature, music, and theology. Drawing on the womanist cadence of Alice Walker in literature and the rhythmical flow of named womanist theologians, Hill makes interventions at the intersections of African American literary criticism, music, and religious studies.

Pushing against the patriarchal dominance that often exists in religious spaces, Hill argues that Black women's religious practice creates a "sermonic space" that thrives inside and outside the church, allowing for a critique of sexism and anti-Black racism. She examines literature by writers such as Zora Neale Hurston and James Baldwin, music by Aretha Franklin and Ms. Lauryn Hill, and sermons by theologians Ruby Sales and Vashti M. McKenzie, and she takes readers into a sermonic artwork of artists, preachers, and freedom movement activists who are, as Hill contends, the greatest "virtuosic alchemists" of our time.

Review Quotes

"A love letter to Black women preachers. . . . Colored Women Sittin' on High preaches on Black women's freedom dreams. Our grandmothers, great grandmothers, and motherly ancestors had dreams that they could not fulfill because they were Black women living in a particular time. We are the embodiment of those freedom dreams, living in ways that at times exceed our ancestors' imaginations for what we could do."--Sojourners Magazine

"Colored Women Sittin' on High is an expressive and passionate analysis. There is no other book-length treatment that brings together such disparate writers, speakers, and musical artists within an overarching eschatological, exegetical, and literary and cultural critical framework."--Crystal J. Lucky, Villanova University

"Black women are on a journey, a magical one. A journey of reclamation and welcoming of our teachers. . . . Who knew about the wonderful world of black women preachers, for instance? I didn't. But there they are; there they have been. Nina Simone's mother was a preacher! What!? Melanie Hill's book is full of them."--Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Color Purple

"Melanie R. Hill's own 'sermonic' voice shines through in this engaging and exciting work, one that will appeal to not only scholars but general readers as well."-- E. Patrick Johnson, author of Honeypot

About the Author

Melanie R. Hill is Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor of Global Racial Justice and Assistant Professor of American Literature at Rutgers University, Newark, and a classically trained gospel violinist.