Continuing Conjure: African-Based Spiritual Traditions in Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad and Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing

James Mellis

doi:10.3390/rel10070403

Abstract

In 2016 and 2017, Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad and Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing both won the National Book Award for fiction, the first time that two African-American writers have won the award in consecutive years. This article argues that both novels invoke African-based spirituality in order to create literary sites of resistance both within the narrative of the respective novels, but also within American culture at large. By drawing on a tradition of authors using African-based spiritual practices, particularly Voodoo, hoodoo, conjure and rootwork, Whitehead and Ward enter and engage in a tradition of African American protest literature based on African spiritual traditions, and use these traditions variously, both as a tie to an originary African identity, but also as protection and a locus of resistance to an oppressive society. That the characters within the novels engage in African spiritual traditions as a means of locating a sense of “home” within an oppressive white world, despite the novels being set centuries apart, shows that these traditions provide a possibility for empowerment and protest and can act as a means for contemporary readers to address their own political and social concerns.

Highlights

In 2016 and 2017, Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad and Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing both won the National Book Award for fiction, the first time that two African-American writers have won the award in consecutive years
In being awarded the National Book Award for Fiction, Whitehead and Ward join the ranks of notable African-American authors Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man, 1953), Alice Walker (The Color Purple, 1983), and Charles Johnson (Middle Passage, 1991)
Is one thread of the supernatural narrative in the novel: one used extensively by Ward and is related to the strands of Voodoo, conjure, rootwork and hoodoo that are presented in the rest of the novel

Summary

Introduction

In 2016 and 2017, Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad and Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing both won the National Book Award for fiction, the first time that two African-American writers have won the award in consecutive years. Using the aforementioned spiritual traditions as a means and model for resisting physical and psychological violence, cultural annihilation and institutional racism in the Americas has been present since the first slaves were transported to the New World via the Middle Passage.3 These beliefs and practices were an important part of both slaves’ lived experience and of the African-American literary tradition they initiated soon after their forced arrival.

Results

Conclusion