In this subtle and illuminating study, Kimberly Rae Connor surveys examples of contemporary literature, drama, art, and music that extend the literary tradition of African-American slave narratives. Revealing the powerful creative links between this tradition and liberation theology's search for grace, she shows how these artworks profess a liberating theology of racial empathy and reconciliation, even if not in traditionally Christian or sacred language.
Connor underscores the broad influence of the slave narrative by considering nonliterary as well as literary works, all of which exhort the reader to step into the experience of the dispossessed. From slave narratives and the writings of Frederick Douglass, Richard Wright, Ernest Gaines, and Toni Morrison she moves to Glenn Ligon's introspective art, Anna Deavere Smith's one-woman performance pieces, and Charlie Haden's politically engaged Liberation Music Orchestra. Imagining Grace shows how these creative endeavors embody the search for grace, seeking to expose racism in all its guises and to lay claim to political, intellectual, and spiritual freedom.
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