Community and Naming: Lived Narratives of Early African American Women’s Spirituality

Elizabeth J West

doi:10.3390/rel11080426

Abstract

Through the story of Francis Sistrunk, nineteenth century enslaved and later freedwoman in east central Mississippi, this essay illustrates that, despite few surviving written narratives of early black women’s spirituality, their experiences can emerge from the silences. Much like paleontologists who recreate narratives of the past through fossils, in the present world of literary studies, we have the advantage of an expanse of resources that, when pieced together, can convey voices from the past to the present. This includes resources such as extant oral and written communal and family narratives, generational ideals and practices, digitized records from official and personal documents, and the recent emergence of DNA technology that provides its own narratives. From the earliest arrivals to the Americas, African diasporic populations maintained an understanding of community and spirit as an integrated oneness empowered through the word, particularly in the word-act of naming. Francis’ story reveals that this spiritual ethos was a generative source, not only for survival, but for some black women it was a mechanism for inscribing their presence, their narratives, and their legacies for future generations. Francis Sistrunk’s story re-emerges through the mining of sources such as these, and reveals that enslaved black women reached for and seized power where they found it to preserve the record of their existence and humanity and to record the story of their enslavers’ injustices.

Highlights

Community Is SpiritAmong the earliest frameworks of African American women’s self-actualization was a sense of belonging and identity, informed by a commonly shared African ethos, maintaining the interconnectedness of secular and sacred1
Community is the core of individual actualization, but the individual self must be proclaimed before the community. One might liken this to the Puritan conversion process that calls for public pronouncement before a candidate is admitted into the so-called
This epistemology of the spiritual is discussed in a number of studies on African American literature and culture

Summary

Introduction

Among the earliest frameworks of African American women’s self-actualization was a sense of belonging and identity, informed by a commonly shared African ethos, maintaining the interconnectedness of secular and sacred. As part of the collective network, individuals define and declare their identities and place in the community, and throughout West African societies from which the New World enslaved originated, naming marked the beginning and gateway to self-actualization This ethos of naming rests in an understanding that nommo, or the life force, emanates from the word: “the word is productive and imperative, calling forth and commanding” This Yoruba proverb underscores the epistemological and spiritual ethos that early Africans transported to their diasporic communities, and its importance has continued for generations, preand post-emancipation Because it is not a static or formulaic phenomenon, nommo “emphasizes the changing the improvisatory self”, and that “each human has the capacity to bring forth divine power” to create and recreate Conventional literary forms, invoked the power of nommo to leave a narrative trail of their existence and their family’s history

It Is Not Just the Written

Calling Forth Francis

Listening for Francis

Findings

57. Family History