Catholic themes and imagery in the work of writers including Toni
Morrison, Leon Forrest, Phyllis Alesia Perry, and Charles Johnson
Sacraments of Memory is the first book to focus
on Catholic themes and imagery in African American literature. Erin Michael
Salius discovers striking elements of the religion in neo-slave narratives
written by Toni Morrison, Leon Forrest, Phyllis Alesia Perry, and Charles
Johnson, among others. Examining the emergence of this major literary genre
following Vatican II and amidst the Black Power and civil rights movements, she
uncovers the presence of Catholic rituals and mysteries—including references to
the Eucharist, Augustinian theology, spirit possession, and stigmata. These
textual references occur alongside and in tension with criticisms of the
Church's political and social policies.
Salius
offers a nuanced reading of Beloved that
interprets the novel in light of Toni Morrison's affiliation with the religion.
She argues that Morrison, and the other novelists in this study, draw on a
Catholic countertradition in American literature that resists Enlightenment
rationality. She highlights allusions to Catholic tropes such as the
connections between spirit possession and the hijacking of Jane's narrative
voice in Ernest Gaines's The
Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. Salius also identifies
Augustinian theology on the prescience of God in the flash-forward narrative
techniques used in Edward P. Jones's The
Known World.
These
authors use Catholicism to challenge the historical realism of past slave
autobiographies and the conventional story of American slavery. Ultimately,
Salius contends that this tradition enables these novelists to imagine and
express radically different ways of remembering the past.
Publication of the paperback edition made possible by a Sustaining
the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National
Endowment for the Humanities.
