Katie's Canon - by Katie Geneva Cannon (Hardcover)

About the Book

Katie Cannon's students referred to her work as "Katie's canon." Not only does this book represent Cannon's best work; it directly addresses canon formation and canon reformation. Cannon canonizes a literary tradition and directly addresses both oppression and liberation of African American women. Now in an expanded 25th-anniversary edition.

Book Synopsis

Katie's Canon is a selection of essays written for a variety of occasions throughout Cannon's celebrated career. This new edition contains three additional essays and a new foreword by Emilie Townes. The volume weaves together the particularities of Cannon's own history and the oral tradition of African American women, African American women's literary traditions, and sociocultural and ethical analysis. The result is a classic. Cannon addresses racism and economics, analyses of Zora Neale Hurston as a resource for a constructive ethic, the importance of race and gender in the development of a Black liberation ethic, womanist preaching in the Black church, and slave ideology and biblical interpretation.

Review Quotes

"Boom! Katie's Canon captures the moral wisdom of Black women while accomplishing her goal to 'recast the very terms and terrain of religious scholarship.' The gathers the best of Cannon's writings as a prophetic call for future generations to confront systems of domination and move from death to life. Katie's Canon is the sacred text that every student of womanist religious thought will return to again and again." --Melanie Jones

"To read Katie's Canon is to experience an African American spiritual in the making." --Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan

"We still hear Katie Geneva Cannon's voice. Cannon calls us into our most authentic selves to do justice 'for the people.'" --Sharon Watson Flucker

"Every theologian, student, and layperson should have a copy of Katie's Canon to measure the breadth and depth of their theological commitment." --James H. Cone

"This is vintage Katie Cannon--challenging, prophetic, self-critical, and womanist to the bone." --Cornel West

"Katie's Canon illustrates the work of making Black women visible. Cannon demonstrates the presence of another canon of moral reasoning not bound to the predominately white and male academy." --Reggie Williams