Powers Divine Spiritual Autobiography and Black Women's Writing

"Tomeiko Ashford Carter offers insight into the true-to-life work of a black female preacher in nineteenth-century America and shows how she helped start a revolution of "spirit writing,' a sanctuary where authors could create powerful leading heroines who live by their own brands of Christian theology. Carter also calls attention to subsequent black female writers whose fiction demonstrates the legacies of life and spirit-writing. She does not leave out black male writers whom she discovers have created their own versions of divine women since the nineteenth-century. Indeed, Power Divine provides unique insight into compelling "divine" characters."--BOOK JACKET.

Tomeiko Ashford Carter is Interim Director of the Institute of African American Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.