Reading Black Books

How African American Literature Can Make Our Faith More Whole and Just

By: Claude Atcho

Narrated by: Amir Abdullah

Learning from Black voices means listening to more than snippets. It means attending to Black stories. Reading Black Books helps Christians hear and learn from enduring Black voices and stories as captured in classic African American literature.

Pastor and teacher Claude Atcho offers a theological approach to ten seminal texts of twentieth-century African American literature. Each chapter takes up a theological category for inquiry through a close literary reading and theological reflection on a primary literary text, from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Richard Wright's Native Son to Zora Neale Hurston's Moses, Man of the Mountain and James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain. The book includes end-of-chapter discussion questions.

Reading Black Books helps people of all backgrounds learn from the contours of Christian faith formed and forged by Black stories, and it spurs continued conversations about racial justice in the church. It demonstrates that reading about Black experience as shown in the literature of great African American writers can guide us toward sharper theological thinking and more faithful living.

©2022 Claude Atcho (P)2022 eChristian

pure magnificent hope!

What a book of raw, reality mixed with the most beautiful pictures of Jesus hope! So profoundly theological, yet truthful to the most heart wrenching realities which racism in all its ugliness has caused. I am longing so much to talk about it with someone but have nobody who loves these matters as I do. Thank you, dear Claude Atcho! Magnificent