Western Michigan University ScholarWorks at WMU Dissertations Graduate College 4-2006 Doers of the Living Word: Gospel Ideology and the African American Womanist Novel Rebecca Erin Huskey Western Michigan University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/dissertations Part of the African American Studies Commons, English Language and Literature Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Huskey, Rebecca Erin, "Doers of the Living Word: Gospel Ideology and the African American Womanist Novel" (2006). Dissertations. 954. https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/dissertations/954 This Dissertation-Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate College at ScholarWorks at WMU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at WMU. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. DOERS OF THE LIVING WORD: GOSPEL IDEOLOGY AND THE AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMANIST NOVEL by Rebecca Erin Huskey A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of The Graduate College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English Western Michigan University Kalamazoo, Michigan April 2006 DOERS OF THE LIVING WORD: GOSPEL IDEOLOGY AND THE AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMANIST NOVEL Rebecca Erin Huskey, Ph.D. Western Michigan University, 2006 In Playing in the Dark, Toni Morrison issues a charge and illuminates the challenge that she and other African American writers face in defining the self through a racially oppressive language: Neither blackness nor “people of color” stimulates in me notions of excessive, limitless love, anarchy, or routine dread. I cannot rely on these metaphorical shortcuts because I am a black writer struggling with and through a language that can powerfully evoke and enforce hidden signs of racial superiority, cultural hegemony, and dismissive “othering” of people and language which are by no means marginal or already and completely known and knowable in my work.