Imagining Eden - (Black Lives in the Diaspora: Past / Present / Future) by Jamall A Calloway

About the Book

"Argues that Black literature has functioned as a primary source of theological reflection and reimagining since its beginnings. From slave narratives to twentieth-century poetry and novels-the latter of which is the focus of this book-it has participated in systematic theological discourse and offered as a response to orthodox interpretations what the author calls heretical hermeneutics, a type of irreverent insight that has explored theological thinking in other ways than the canonical. For Black writers, the authoritative and the doctrinal have justified white political sovereignty, and therefore freedom can only be found in the heretical, the blasphemous, and the creative reimagining of theologies and biblical documents. Jamall A. Calloway contends that Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison use religious symbolism to depict fully formed Black liberation theologies that address the complexities of religious wonder, theological doctrines, social practices, and communal rituals. All see the Garden of Eden as a unifying center; the author evaluates Wright's fall from Paradise in conversation with Kierkegaard's, Baldwin's opposition to the mortification of the flesh found in St. Paul, Morrison's sexuality compared to St. Augustine's, and Walker's radical notion of a free, living animal in conversation with Catholic theologian Ivone Gebara. In their different ways all four writers offer liberation theologies that return to Eden to explore how Black lives are marked by tragedy and how they can find the human and spiritual qualities needed to persist in the face of it"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

A number of Black writers have drawn inspiration from the biblical tale of the expulsion from paradise. In this deeply interdisciplinary and poetically written book, Jamall A. Calloway explores the presence of Eden and the aftermath of the Fall in works by James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Richard Wright, and Alice Walker. In reflecting on Eden, he contends, these writers rethought what paradise could mean in the face of the catastrophes of the Black experience.

By placing key novels in conversation with major religious thinkers, Calloway shows how Black writers adopted Edenic motifs to rebut orthodox interpretations of Genesis, with striking theological implications. He argues that Baldwin's Giovanni's Room counters St. Paul's proclamations on the mortification of the flesh, reads Morrison's Paradise against St. Augustine's City of God as a challenge to the exclusions of the Garden of Eden, investigates Wright's use of Søren Kierkegaard's interpretation of Adam in The Outsider, and demonstrates how Walker's The Color Purple and Catholic theologian Ivone Gebara offer a radical reconceptualization of the serpent in Genesis. The book concludes with a reflection on Lucille Clifton's poetry. Revealing the richness of Black writers' engagement with theology, Imagining Eden is a profoundly original consideration of literature and liberation, God and humanity.

Review Quotes

Jamall Calloway's book is a profound and powerful wrestling with the complexity of evil in the works of great Black literary artists and grand Christian theologians. In our grim moment of Trump, his brilliant probing of the Fall, original sin, and possible redemption yields some much-needed light and hope!--Cornel West, Union Theological Seminary

This sensitive, deeply personal, historically responsible, and boldly original work challenges us to approach the sacred site of the Garden of Eden story with fresh eyes. By placing seminal black thinkers in dialogue with classic theologians, Calloway gives us a rich liberatory framework to think about loss, expulsion, and ways of being in the world.--Candida Moss, author of God's Ghostwriters: Enslaved Christians and the Making of the Bible

By stimulating a conversation between works of Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison, theologies of original sin or the fall, and notions of paradise, Jamall Calloway demonstrates in Imagining Eden the power of black literature to evoke a sophisticated liberative theology that honors Black people's responses to loss through hard won spiritual insight, grit, and ironic laughter as well as regret, blunder, and frustration.--M. Shawn Copeland, author of Enfleshing Freedom: Body, Race, and Being

Each chapter of Jamall Calloway's thoughtful exploration proves that our understandings of African American faith and religion are incomplete without a discussion of the theological issues being debated on the pages of African American literature.--Qiana Whitted, author of "A God of Justice?" The Problem of Evil in Twentieth-Century Black Literature

In this groundbreaking book, Jamall Calloway forever changes our understanding of Black culture and Euromodern theology. By reading classic Black writers James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker as theologians who fundamentally reconfigure the "Garden of Eden," and "Fall from Grace" narratives in their work, Calloway uncovers a vibrant and insightful tradition of political theology that is critically attuned to tragedy, struggle and liberation. Calloway's writing is poetic, his analysis is sharp and sophisticated, his close-readings balance technical mastery of the material, and his attentiveness to broader questions in the scholarly literature is masterful. This is first-rate scholarship.--Alex Zamalin, author of Black Utopia: The History of an Idea from Black Nationalism to Afrofuturism

This suggestive book reveals the subtle yet profound theological influence that shapes some classic works by Baldwin, Morrison, Walker, and Wright. With the insight of a systematic theologian and the depth of a literary critic, Jamall Calloway's rich and complex tracking of the theological threads woven into our finest secular writing is, at the same time, a compelling dialogue between tradition and innovation, Biblical themes and Black literary tropes, paradise and African American history. Imagining Eden invites us to reshape our understanding of African American literature and refine how we think about "doing" theology.--Andre C. Willis, Brown University

About the Author

Jamall A. Calloway is an assistant professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Georgetown University and an honorary research lecturer in the School of Religion, Philosophy, and Classics at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg Campus.