Soul Talk: The New Spirituality of African American Women

by Akasha Gloria Hull

• A celebration of the journey of African-American women toward a new spirituality grounded in social awareness, black American tradition, metaphysics, and heightened creativity.

• Features illuminating insights from Alice Walker, Toni Cade Bambara, Lucille Clifton, Dolores Kendrick, Sonia Sanchez, Michele Gibbs, Geraldine McIntosh, Masani Alexis DeVeaux and Namonyah Soipan.

• By a widely published scholar, poet, and activist who has been interviewed by the press, television, and National Public Radio's All Things Considered

From the last part of the twentieth century through today, African-American women have experienced a revival of spirituality and creative force, fashioning a uniquely African-American way to connect with the divine. In Soul Talk , Akasha Gloria Hull examines this multifaceted spirituality that has both fostered personal healing and functioned as a formidable weapon against racism and social injustice.

Through fascinating and heartfelt conversations with some of today's most creative and powerful women--women whose spirituality encompasses, among others, traditional Christianity, Tibetan Buddhism, Native American teachings, meditation, the I Ching, and African-derived ancestral reverence--the author explores how this new spiritual consciousness is manifested, how it affects the women who practice it, and how its effects can be carried to others.

Using a unique and readable blend of interviews, storytelling, literary critique, and practical suggestions of ways readers can incorporate similar renewal into their daily lives, Soul Talk shows how personal and social change are possible through reconnection with the spirit.

Genres: Nonfiction, Spirituality, Religion

259 pages, Paperback

First published January 4, 2001

About the author

Akasha Gloria Hull (born December 6, 1944) is a poet, educator, writer, and critic whose work in African-American literature and as a Black feminist activist has helped shape Women’s Studies. As one of the architects of Black Women's Studies, her scholarship and activism has increased the prestige, legitimacy, respect, and popularity of feminism and African-American studies.

Dr. Hull has been a professor of women's studies and literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz, the University of Delaware, and the University of the West Indies, Mona, in Kingston, Jamaica. She has published four books, a monograph, three edited collections, over twenty articles in peer-reviewed professional journals, numerous chapters in a dozen volumes, fifteen book reviews, poems in more than thirty magazines and anthologies, and two short stories. Her first novel, Neicy, is due for release in late 2012. She lives in Little Rock, Arkansas (USA).

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Belle · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is the perfect push to start looking for purpose.

[Malebo Sephodi · Rating 5 out of 5]

what a read! exactly what i needed for this existential crisis i am experiencing

[Jo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did not enjoy this book. If I could I would rate it 2 and a half stars. It took me so long to finish it and I had to force myself through it. I felt like the author used too many words to say something and then repeated the same themes too often. Some sentences would run on for so long that I'd forget the original point.. It never had me fully engaged. I suspect that my issue with it is that I'm not that 'deep.' The author references another book, Salt Eaters, so often that this book felt like a thesis based on it.

The author references other authors and films that I plan to check out. I am interested in spiritualism but this author's writing style did not work for me. 🤷🏽‍♀️ I would not recommend this book to a friend.

[Paige]

I finished this book a year ago and it inspired me to write a series of black quantum feminist zines. before this book I had never really seen black women's creative & spiritual process and theories of the universe explained in any way with any seriousness. This is a sacred text.

[X · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first completed book of 2018. This book changed my life.

[Dan Gorman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insightful combination of spiritual philosophy and art theory. Akasha Gloria Hull details major African American figures from the "New Age" movement, or "New Spirituality," to use Hull's terms. The artists profiled in this book include Alice Walker, Toni Cade Bambara, Lucille Clifton, Dolores Kendrick, Sonia Sanchez, Michele Gibbs, Geraldine McIntosh, Masani Alexis DeVeaux, and Namonyah Soipan. They worked in different fields such as fiction, poetry, film, studio art, but they all drew on African American history, West African cultures, and metaphysical practices to produce Black feminist art in the late twentieth century.

[Readhead · Rating 1 out of 5]

I couldn't get through this book. It's very unnecessarily wordy. The way it's written takes you two or three paragraphs to actually understand what is being said. I didn't even get through a quarter of this book before I just gave up and gave it away because I realized I was not interested nor going to continue reading it.

[Essence McDowell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book changed by life. It's everything and more. It helped me find my place amongst a lineage of women with whom I share a common ancestry. I'm so grateful for the words of Mama Akasha. I wish I could meet her one day and say thank you for writing Soul Talk. Thank you for providing such enriching knowledge and deep spiritual affirmation that stretches across decades.

[Lynecia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Off The BookShelf Project #56

[Fenesha Hubbard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I appreciate the author's willingness to write about connecting with spirits, which is not always embraced by the African American community.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Groundbreaking. Hulls methodology is inspirational.

[Lawrence]

ht how to survive the end of the world