We Pursue Our Magic: A Spiritual History of Black Feminism

by Marina Magloire

Drawing on the collected archives of distinguished twentieth-century Black woman writers such as Lucille Clifton, Audre Lorde, Toni Cade Bambara, Lorraine Hansberry, and others, Marina Magloire traces a new history of Black feminist thought in relation to Afro-diasporic religion. Beginning in the 1930s with the pathbreaking ethnographic work of Katherine Dunham and Zora Neale Hurston in Haiti and ending with the present-day popularity of Afro-diasporic spiritual practices among Black women, she offers an alternative genealogy of Black feminism, characterized by its desire to reconnect with ancestrally centered religions like Vodou.

Magloire reveals the tension, discomfort, and doubt at the heart of each woman's efforts to connect with ancestral spiritual practices. These revered writers are often regarded as unchanging monuments to Black womanhood, but Magloire argues that their feminism is rooted less in self-empowerment than in a fluid pursuit of community despite the inevitable conflicts wrought by racial capitalism. The subjects of this book all model a nuanced Black feminist praxis grounded in the difficult work of community building between Black women across barriers of class, culture, and time.

Genres: Nonfiction

218 pages, Paperback

Published September 5, 2023

Reviews

[Adrianne Ackroyd · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The construction of Black feminist genealogies is akin to hoodoo in its use of ancestors to shore up power in the pre­sent. The Black feminist quest for ancestors in a lacunar archive is often marked by a desire on the part of contemporary Black feminists to reconstruct a vis­i­ble lineage of survival, passed from dead Black­ women to living ones."

This was a brilliant monograph.

[Andrew Bishop · Rating 4 out of 5]

I showed up for the occult history and folklore and got an even broader literary consideration of its subjects with an equally good diaspora studies analysis.

[Matthew Molinaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

someone randomly left this for me in my grad mailbox, so I already felt some magic going on! this is a dazzling piece of scholarship and service to the spirits!