★★★★★ 5
An exceptional, stunningly beautiful, and greatly needed book
Format: Paperback
Have you ever finished a book so heavy with truth and beauty and goodness that you don’t know how to sum it up? That’s where I am upon completing Claude Atcho’s Reading Black Books: How African American Literature Can Make Our Faith More Whole and Just. I’m the sort who marks up books with notes, underlining, and asterisks. Pages with ideas I want to return to get a folded corner. For this book? More pages are folded than not and a flip through the book reveals copious amounts of fuchsia markings.
Full disclosure: Claude is a writer friend; we’ve chatted about faith, books, work, writing, and podcasting. I’ve been eagerly awaiting the release of his book, knowing it would be fantastic. You might think I was biased in that assumption, considering our previous connection, considering I received an ARC from Brazos Press.
What I found from the first pages was even more than expected: my friend as pastor, shepherd, prophet, counselor, guide. Claude features 10 key creative African American works to cast a vision for human flourishing rooted in the power and love of God found in Jesus Christ. Just listen to this moving excerpt: “Healing is found in the constant individual and communal turn toward the tender mercies of God, who calls us to a theological remembrance: to locate our history in his, to make sense of our memory in his memory, to process our wounds in his wounds” (126). This book is beautifully written, theologically robust, and desperately needed. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It is stunning.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 17, 2022
