Reading Black Books: How African American Literature Can Make Our Faith More Whole and Just by Atcho, Claude

Christianity Today 2023 Book Award Finalist (Culture & the Arts)
Midwest Book Review 2023 Gold Book Award Winner (Nonfiction - Religion/Philosophy)

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 10 seminal texts of 20th-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 readers 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.

Author: Claude Atcho
Publisher: Brazos Press
Published: 05/17/2022
Pages: 208
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.62lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9781587435294

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 05/01/2022 pg. 93

About the Author
Claude Atcho (MTS, Midwestern Seminary) is pastor of Church of the Resurrection in Charlottesville, Virginia. He has taught African American literature at the collegiate level and is a regular writer and podcast contributor for Think Christian. He has written for Christ & Pop Culture, The Gospel Coalition, and The Witness: A Black Christian Collective.