The Talking Book

The Bible has profoundly influenced African Americans throughout their history. This wide-ranging book is the first to explore the African American experience of the Bible from a variety of perspectives. Connecting biblical stories and images to the music, politics, religion, and arts and letters of African Americans, the book demonstrates the centrality of the Bible in black culture, both popular and highbrow. African Americans first came to the Bible under the yoke of slavery. The Bible was not read but heard, and its stories became first a source of songs, spirituals, and hollers, and later, after the Civil War, a powerful motivation for learning to read. Allen Callahan traces the Bible culture that developed during and following enslavement. He identifies the most important biblical images for African Americans - Exile, Exodus, Ethiopia, and Emmanuel - and discusses their recurrence and their role in the formation of a collective identity and sense of justice. With insights into the deeply interwoven histories of African Americans and the Bible, the author guides his readers toward a deeper appreciation of both.