Flying Home: A Mode of Conversion in the African American Context

African American literature has been one of the chief purveyors of African American culture’s folklore tradition. Writers, through fiction and nonfiction accounts, keep alive the stories of such figures as Br’er Rabbit, High John the Conquerer, and John Henry. Other than these manifest folktales, th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Pastoral psychology 2020-08, Vol.69 (4), p.383-404
Main Author: Hinds, Jay-Paul
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
African Americans
American literature
Behavioral Science and Psychology
Black culture
Clinical Psychology
Consciousness
Conversion
Cross Cultural Psychology
Fiction
Flying
Folklore
Nonfiction
Psychology
Religious Studies
Sociology
Sorrow
Supernatural
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Summary:African American literature has been one of the chief purveyors of African American culture’s folklore tradition. Writers, through fiction and nonfiction accounts, keep alive the stories of such figures as Br’er Rabbit, High John the Conquerer, and John Henry. Other than these manifest folktales, there is also a canon of latent folktales that modern writers are attempting to bring back to African American consciousness. Such is the case with Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon , a novel that shares the informative and inspirational folktale of flying Africans. This article explores the role that flying plays not only in Morrison’s novel but also its continued relevance and effectiveness for African Americans, and other oppressed communities, seeking liberation. I propose that flying is a mode of religious conversion (i.e., an act of (re-)turning) that has enabled African Americans to come in touch with supernatural resources during times of sociopolitical, communal, and personal sorrow.
ISSN:0031-2789
1573-6679
DOI:10.1007/s11089-020-00923-4