Katie's Canon: Womanism and the Soul of the Black Community

by Katie Geneva Cannon (Editor)

Overview

Katie's Canon is a selection of essays written for a variety of occasions throughout Cannon's celebrated career. This new edition contains three additional essays and a new foreword by Emilee Townes. The volume weaves together the particularities of Cannon's own history and the oral tradition of African American women, African American women's literary traditions, and sociocultural and ethical analysis. The result is a classic. Cannon addresses racism and economics, analyses of Zora Neale Hurston as a resource for a constructive ethic, the importance of race and gender in the development of a Black liberation ethic, womanist preaching in the Black church, and slave ideology and biblical interpretation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781506471303
Publisher:	Augsburg Fortress, Publishers
Publication date:	11/23/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	248
File size:	503 KB

About the Author

Katie Geneva Cannon (1950-2018) was the Annie Scales Rogers Professor of Christian Ethics at Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond, Virginia (2001-2018). She was the first African American woman ordained in the United Presbyterian Church (USA) and was the pioneer of womanist theology and ethics. Among her many books are God's Fierce Whimsy: The Implications of Feminism for Theological Education (1985), Womanist Theological Ethics: A Reader (2011), and The Oxford Handbook of African American Theology (2014).

Editorial Reviews

In 13 essays and an appendix, Cannon charts the process of her canon formation, based on an inclusive ethic. She says that in each essay she is ``conducting a three-pronged systemic analysis of race, sex and class from the perspective of African American women in the academy of religion.'' Her development begins with an historical detailing of what forged the black feminist consciousness. Cannon reveals how black women have found themselves to be moral agents in an African American tradition that combines both the ``real-lived'' texture of African American life and the oral-aural cultural tradition vital to African Americans. Cannon, the first African American woman to earn a Ph.D. from Union Theological Seminary and the first to be ordained to the Ministry of Word and Sacrament in the United Presbyterian Church USA, a womanist philosopher and a theologian, deals mainly with canonical issues and ``canon formation'' as she calls for an inclusive rather than an exclusive frame of reference for governing life choices. Katie's Canon is both provocative and enlightening. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Cannon's (ethics and women's studies, Temple Univ.) pun-intentional canon is a compilation of previously published essays, papers, and articles. An eclectic mix of literary criticism, social commentary, liberation theology, and womanist ethics, this is more of a "best of" than a systematic theology; the author's canon represents her evolving analyses of the black female experience in its totality. She excels at unpacking the literary heritage of Zora Neale Hurston and the vitality of the black oral tradition. Cannon moves easily from the passion of folklore and legend to the conceptually rich but heavily academic language of ethics and womanist theology. Her role "is to speak as `one of the canonical boys' and as the `noncanonical other' at one and the same time." In this, she most assuredly succeeds. For academic libraries.-Sandra Collins, SLIS, Univ. of Pittsburgh

Library Journal

"In her book Katie's Canon, the explosive voice of Katie Geneva Cannon as womanist and theological liberation ethicist boldly proclaims the vital presence and contributions of African American women."--The Presbyterian Outlook

"This is vintage Katie Cannon - challenging, prophetic, self-critical, and womanist to the bone."--Cornel West

"Provocative and enlightening."--Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher