Exploring the intersection of spirituality and aesthetics in literary texts by African and African-descended writers on the continent and in the Americas, Literary Expressions of African Spirituality offers a new conceptual framework for understanding African and diasporic agency and originality. The essays in this collection challenge, expand, and elaborate on previous conceptions of art, identity, and the African spiritual cosmos. -- Alma Jean Billingslea, professor, Department of English, Spelman College The editors of Literary Expressions of African Spirituality have created a volume that is essential reading for serious scholars of African American literature and culture because its chapters genuinely enhance what we know about African influences on African American cultural production. This work contributes to interdisciplinary approaches to African American literature. In addition, scholars and students of Africana, Black Diaspora, and Black Transnational Studies, as well as students and scholars of Literary and Cultural Studies, generally, will find it highly relevant. The co-editors' introduction is brilliantly conceived and executed- perfectly setting up the illuminating contributions that follow. I highly recommend it. -- Lovalerie King, director, Africana Research Center, Pennsylvania State University Marsh-Lockett and West have assembled an impressive collection of critical essays in Literary Expressions of African Spirituality. These essays serve to illuminate a literary area that has too oft been relegated to the shadows of scholarly attention due to the complexity of spiritual memory emanating from members of the diaspora. In a well-wrought introduction and 11 additional chapters, Marsh-Lockett and West provide an open window of scholarly demystification of African Spirituality. -- Emily Allen-Williams, Founding Dean, School of Arts and Sciences, Paine College
