In My Grandmother's House: Black Women, Faith, and the Stories We Inherit

by Yolanda Pierce

What if the most steadfast faith you'll ever encounter comes from a Black grandmother?

The church mothers who raised Yolanda Pierce, dean of Howard University School of Divinity, were busily focused on her survival. In a world hostile to Black women's bodies and spirits, they had to be. Born on a former cotton plantation and having fled the terrors of the South, Pierce's grandmother raised her in the faith inherited from those who were enslaved. Now, in the pages of In My Grandmother's House, Pierce reckons with that tradition, building an everyday womanist theology rooted in liberating scriptures, experiences in the Black church, and truths from Black women's lives. Pierce tells stories that center the experiences of those living on the underside of history, teasing out the tensions of race, spirituality, trauma, freedom, resistance, and memory.

A grandmother's theology carries wisdom strong enough for future generations. The Divine has been showing up at the kitchen tables of Black women for a long time. It's time to get to know that God.

Genres: Nonfiction, Spirituality, Memoir, Religion, Theology, Faith, Womens

208 pages, Hardcover

Published February 16, 2021

About the author

Rev. Dr. Yolanda Pierce is Professor and Dean of the Howard University School of Divinity in Washington, DC. She is the first woman to be appointed as Dean in the Divinity School’s 150-year history. In 2016, Pierce served as the Founding Director of the Center for African American Religious Life at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). Previously, she served as the Founding Director of the Center for Black Church Studies and Associate Professor of Religion and Literature at Princeton Theological Seminary. Pierce holds degrees from Cornell University and Princeton University.

Pierce’s research specialties include African American Religious History; Womanist Theology; African American Literature; and Race and Religion. A widely-published author, her work focuses on the historical and contemporary significance of the African American religious tradition. Pierce has written over 50 critical essays and articles in academic and trade journals which consider the relationship between religious faith, race, and gender in the American context. You can find her work in a wide variety of publications, including: Time Magazine; Christian Century; Theology Today; and Christianity & Literature.

Reviews

[Ristina Gooden · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most authentic telling of the Black woman’s experience of church & faith that I have ever read. Deeply grateful for Dr. Pierce’s honesty. It was my entire life in 175 pages.

[J Percell Lakin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful tribute to a grandmother, black women, the black church, and also the power of womanist theology to embrace and cultivate life in the midst of the pain and brokenness of the world.

I loved how Dr. Pierce didn’t gloss over imperfections in order to honor the past and the people she loved and cherished. This was just a beautiful and well-written book filled with stories that resonate and theology that inspires. I walk away from this book thinking about my great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother - their journeys, their pains and triumphs, their love and the beautiful way they showed me to love.

[Dawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you’ve ever struggled with reconciling black and identities with Christianity, but know without a doubt that you love God, this is the book for you. The author brilliantly examines humanity from a black perspective and connects the dots to Christian theology in ways that not only make sense, but are motivational. This is a book I know I’ll return to time and time again.

Some of topics explored:
Dwindling faith in American society
The limiting ideas of patriarchy
Images of Jesus
Nourishment of the body and spirit
Black female identity and perceptions to others
The beauty of motherhood in and out of the church
Miscommunication of controversial biblical texts
Confronting racism as a Christian

I also really appreciated the “washing whiter than snow” idea and how damaging it is to correlate purity with whiteness. I’ve been saying this for years, but she was able to express this so eloquently and I haven’t felt so seen as a black woman in a very, very long time.

I loved it and can’t wait to read more from this wonderful theologian. 5 stars!

[Stephanie Ridiculous · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a gift. Pierce shares such a tender, vulnerable, and touching reflection of her upbringing. I cried several times I was so moved by her conviction and love. What a beautiful and powerful faith & I am glad she chose to share it with us all. 💕

[Tracy Simmons · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding. It was like a historical journey of sorts of so many African American families and churches.
Moving. So much wisdom. Uplifting. Life altering stories and confirmations. I did not want it to end.

[Ronie Reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lots to reflect on!

[Geovanna Toliver · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderfully written book. I enjoyed it. I, like the author, was raised in the Church of God in Christ (COGIC). My mother was filled with the Holy Ghost while carrying me in her womb. I am still a member. Dr. Pierce's and my perspectives about the COGIC church and the Bible are different but that doesn't negate anything that Dr. Pierce has written. She has written from her personal experiences and it just attests to the fact that our journeys may share an intersection, but God navigates us toward different streets.

[Candy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up from a Black History Month display.
As a white woman, I learned how much I have in common with a black woman, and how much I never knew.
Our faith is a common denominator, but still a way different lived experience.
We all see life from our own window.
I'm grateful to this author for letting me see the world through her eyes.
Blessings to you, Ms Pierce.

[TPLL · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. This was an amazing book explaining Black culture, realigning, and womanist theology through stories in the past and the present. What a gift.

[Kate Matthews · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is simply wonderful - it is what theology needs to be: full of meaning, beauty and power for the living of our days. I am ordering more copies to give as gifts.

[Cassaundra · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book! I identified with so many of Dr. Pierce's experiences with her grandmother, "mothers" of the church and women in her community. Her story is a balm in Gilead for me and I'm so glad this book found me. I read it on Kindle and Audible, but will buy a print copy to add to my personal library.

[Steve Watson · Rating 5 out of 5]

After hearing Ms. Pierce on a podcast, I bought this book to give to a friend of mine, whose faith has also been inherited through generations of Black women. I thought I should at least skim the book before gifting it. But then I poured over every page. I wasn't prepared for just how good this book would be.

Over twelve chapters, Pierce writes of the faith she's inherited as well as the faith she seeks to live in today. She writes with a Black womanist's sensibility, honoring the traditions of the Black church in general and her grandmother's lived experience in particular, engaging that tradition and inheritance both critically and gratefully.

This is an inspiring memoir and set of essays about the legacy of Black grandmothers and the Black church brought into conversation with contemporary life. For me, as a post-evangelical white Christian and pastor, it is also a moving work of ongoing reconstruction. The word deconstruction has been in vogue among exvangelicals to describe dismantling and losing legacies of faith that are not loving or liberatory. Fair enough. But to live forward with faith, hope, and love, how much better to practice a reclamation artist's craft rather than merely wielding a wrecking ball. Pierce receives and includes the wisdom and faith and strength of her ancestors and then builds upon it, moving forward in new ways with the tradition she has received. It's a great example of what Ken Wilber and Richard Rohr and others talk about as including and transcending.

Lastly, Pierce's book is wonderful to read because it is not only a work of power but a work of art. The prose and storytelling are lean and beautiful. Even the arc of the essay's arrangement, building toward an integration of her grandmother's death with themes of the tragedy of America's history on race is moving. The chapters on silence and safety are, among, others just stunning in their impact. I'm grateful for this book.

[Patrick Reyes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must read for all religious leaders.

[Shanique Edwards · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal.

[David Crumm · Rating 5 out of 5]

An Invitation to Discover 'The Stories' that Define this Theologian's Life
I wish that I had first read Dr. Yolanda Pierce's earlier book, Hell Without Fires: Slavery, Christianity, and the Antebellum Spiritual Narrative, which also is available from Amazon. And, now, I have put that earlier book on my future reading list. The summary of that book suggests to me that it provides a larger and deeper context in which this new and quite personal book is deeply rooted. But I am delighted to have received Dr. Pierce's newest book from Broadleaf Books for review and I want to heartily recommend it to other readers now.
This new book, which was just published in February 2023, may seem like a memoir at first, but in fact it is an invitation to step into a storytelling circle with Dr. Pierce in which she weaves a tapestry of memories from her family and from her own life. The core theme of the book is recognizing the centrality of sacred family circles, whether the family members are defined by blood or by choice, in African American communities. One clue to this theme is the subtitle on the front cover: Black Women, Faith, and the Stories We Inherit. You might also want to cheat a bit and explore the other "bookend" of this theme, which appears in the final three pages: an Afterword written by Dr. Pierce's daughter. And, no, it won't spoil the book if you read the daughter's ending piece, first, and in fact what she has to say in those final few pages may enhance your experience.
If this sounds intriguing to you, as so many of us are trying to explore minority experience within the cataclysm of American history, then please get yourself a copy and enjoy this book. I found it so engaging that I read it start to finish in a single day.
What is especially remarkable about the opportunity represented in this book is that Dr. Pierce welcomes us into her family story as a self-identified "Protestant Pentecostal," "a Womanist Theologian," a scholar, an ordained pastor, teacher and preacher. If you know much about the Black church in America, that's a fairly rare convergence of identities. It is that rare blend of experiences that led Howard University to name her its Professor & Dean of Howard University School of Divinity.
What also made me feel right at home in this new book is the significant nod Dr. Pierce makes to pioneering theologian Howard Thurman. Just as her own new book is being published, Dr. Pierce also appears as the writer of the new Foreword for the newest edition of Thurman's Meditations of the Heart. I do not own that new edition, but I do have an earlier edition in my home library and can heartily recommend that as well.
I have been a journalist covering religious diversity in America for nearly 50 years and I am so pleased to see Thurman's influence freshly lifted up in so many ways, including in Dr. David Gushee's new Introducing Christian Ethics. I agree with Drs. Pierce and Gushee that Thurman did try to provide us a clearer pathway toward Christian unity, although most Americans sadly paid little attention.
There are many reasons I'm glad that this new book now is available to help us step into a sacred narrative of families who the majority of American Christians have long overlooked and often have tragically misunderstood.

[sweetconnectionswithtoni · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a book I chose for one of my birthday month reads, Green Cover, Black Author! I’ve never read this Author’s material before and OH MY!! Did this book sting me, made me say Wow, Ouch, Right, and let me do better. I didn’t want it to end.

Book: In My Grandmothers House
Author: @yn_pierce

This book is a must read, it’s thought provoking, so I’m only going to post my takeaways 👌🏾

1. Pray to Celebrate God’s goodness while you are in the land of the living
2. Pray for your child/grandchild until he can’t pray for himself and then more
3. Black women are the Most women who attend church than anyone else
4. Black women are the most faithful
5. Black women are most religious, giving, serving
6. Ordinary things of God is a miracle
7. A Miracle is to love the church that may not be growing that appears to be dying by just as Jesus calls dead things back to life
8. Humanity - I exist and I am uniquely made in God’s image
9. Dignity - My story matters and the material and spiritual conditions of my life matters to God
10. Agency - I choose to serve God

I’ve seen these questions on various platforms.
What do you do first, how do you separate the space you’re in. How do you cipher your reading.
No matter the genre I read, I give my first to God, to wake up and be in the land of the living is a BIG DEAL. I work in an Industry where I assist Cancer patients along side being an entrepreneur, and to receive that call that they’re no longer here, makes you think twice about life and your purpose.

[J. Michael Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

My motive for picking up this book was a quest for mentors: writers whose thinking and life experiences could both guide and inspire me. In this search, I have benefited from plenty of white guys: Parker Palmer, Dietrick Bonhoeffer, Hermann Hesse, William C. Martin, etc. (My reviews of their books appear on this website.) But as I age, I feel the need to expand my repertoire of teachers. What could Black men and women teach me? White women? Latin Americans? Asians? Women in Hitler’s Germany? Nuns? Mystics? LGBTQ+ persons? Non-Christians?

I’ve been more intentional about selecting the authors who feed my soul—trying to discover something about them before committing myself to the books they’ve written. And so I came across Yolanda Pierce: the first female dean of Howard University’s School of Divinity. She was also the director at the Smithsonian’s Museum of African American History—working on their presentation of African American Religious Life.

In My Grandmother’s House includes twelve brief essays that include memories of Pierce’s grandmother, the older women in her grandmother’s Pentecostal Church, the traditions of her childhood church and family, and her growing awareness of the meaning of those customs. Interspersed with the Grandmother stories are illustrations of the stresses, opportunities, and injustices that Pierce has experienced in her adult life.

In this superbly written book, Pierce’s reflections and gleaned wisdom are folded gently and poignantly into the narrative. The result—for me—is a book that feels inclusive (I too have many formative “grandmother” experiences) and awakening (Pierce’s experience of others is often quite different from my own.)

I wish the writer lived next door—and I had the chance to benefit regularly from her grace, integrity, and honesty.

[Antona Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the simplicity of remembering all the lessons I learned from my Grandmother, her wisdom carried me this year, 2021, when I had a difficult summer that invited me to consider my future. One of the beauties of this short little book is that it is something you can go back to, while it is faith infused, it is very much a love song to all the Black grandmothers who hold up communities.

My own lessons of faith were to keep striving for my best, to believe in good and work for it, to know that vengeance is not mine, and that water is restorative. This is a book of faith and also an important contribution to the non-fiction writing that has emerged in 2020 and 2021. It took me back to my growing up in the Black Baptist church with the front row of peppermint giving mothers of the church in their hats. If it was my father's sisters, they would all be in matching suits that some of them made, pristine to a T. These women, at first intimidating by their sheer number and presence, that they survived so much, were really so deeply loving and affirming.

Rev. Dr. Yolanda Pierce has given us a gift.

[Monica Leak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. Pierce conveyed the truth of faith, the sacred, the coming of age like pieces of scrap fabric stitched together by well worn hands. Each square, sewn with care with the intent of warming the soul and calling to remembrance. Reading this brought to memory a list of great aunties, great great aunties, my grandmothers and my great grandmother and caused me to take pause to treasure the memories, to reflect and journal and honor the seeds planted in me from them and those before for my own journey. This is a book that I will go back to when I need to drink from the well of wisdom of those beautiful black women that I have gone before me.

[Vyn Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed how refreshing for me the book was. It wasn't a super difficult read and I was able to sit with some of the themes present in the book. Of course there were some passages that were a bit more jarring than others, as I as a reader had experiences that relate to her experiences in the church growing up and experiences as a Black woman in the United States.
All in all, I did enjoy this book a lot as it had given me some language to address my personal feelings about the black church. I do think if you are looking for a good read that may give some insight into the conflict of feelings and the gentleness that the author, Yolanda Pierce is learning, this is a great book.

[Harold · Rating 5 out of 5]

This lives in the world between memoirs and essay. It is the the beautifully written journey of Yolanda Pierce’s reflections on her religion (and her life) as taught by the story of her grandmother, who raised her, and her relationship with her religion and her community. Interwoven is how meaningful her religion is in her life — which makes sense since she is the dean of Howard’s School of Divinity — and the modern world. It touches on the prejudices against black women, and on the values of tradition. I am not a religious person. I don’t believe in God. But this short book touched me. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

[Cathy Webb · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an incredible book about the legacy of a grandmother. The author learns the history, the meanings for tradition, and the faith that was so important to her African American grandmother. A woman from slavery. She shares what she learned about “black Jesus”, about leaving home and then challenging some of your history, and hearing more for the first time. She shares what it is like to be black and to have to question safety. For herself and if others will fear her. She especially shares her thanks and gratitude for the small every day things, as well as the miracles.
Wonderful book full of thought and insight.

[Destiny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where do I even begin? I usually don’t give comments unless requested or called, but this book is an exception. Definitely calls for me to do so. The words and passion, history, and references in this book have highlighted many areas in my life. Even my newfound journey of rediscovering my faith as a Christian. I had walked away from my faith due to a lack of language and articulation; the way she had put everything into words that I have found and am becoming in love with moved me. The courage that Yolanda took in bringing light to what seems not to be spoken of or dismissed. I love that she spoke on them! She has left me with encouragement and confirmation of my faith!

[Jim Dobbins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really thought-provoking on issues of race and racism. The content is much deeper than the title might suggest. The background of growing up in a Black, Pentecostal church, and her path from that theology to her present-day faith infuses her perspective on race in America. While I didn't agree with her views 100% of the time, I also didn't grow up with the perspective that informed those views. So even where I may not have agreed, her insight was eye-opening. I highly recommend this book, so much so that I've gone straight back to the beginning, to reread it!

[Brad Dell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, beautiful. Read this between three long sittings, and am closing it with gratitude. Near the end, Dr. Pierce roots gratitude in remembrance, and this book bloomed in me gratitude through the remembrance of how my own elders instilled me with wisdom. I’m also stepping away with a humbling: reading her stories of mistreatment and suspicion turned me to reflect on my privilege, and helped me to realize ways my theologies’ language/traditions might chaff others. Don’t read this book if you don’t wanna think. But read it if you hunger for wisdom, stories, strength.

[Leila Kern · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books that I have ever read! Thank you, Yolanda Pierce for writing this story that needed to be told! I am very grateful a book like this has been published. I have learned so much about Black women and their faith and some of the struggles they face and continue to face! This is a well written book which only touches the tip of the iceberg. It has opened my eyes and made me think about how others are treated! Marvelous and insightful book! This book is definitely a keeper!

[Michelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was so excited to read this book, and there are definitely beautiful parts. In the end, though, the book reads as an apology—in the double meaning of that word. It reads as an apology to the author’s grandmother for moving from traditional Christian beliefs to more heterodox/progressive convictions, including an abandonment of Scripture whenever it doesn’t “work” for her. It also reads as a long apologetic, or a “defense,” of those same heterodox beliefs…ones that I’m quite sure her faithful grandma would not have approved of. Sigh. This book made me tired, and it made me sad.

[Carol Hay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written by a black women gives more depth to this book. Not only does the reader get wisdom about scripture, theology, sacraments, church attendance, and spiritualism - we also can better understand history and its effect on others. Listening from a position of white privilege makes Yolanda Pierce's words more impactful, and made me appreciative that she chose to share from her heart, her research, her experiences, and her understanding of faith. Lots of reflection with this book.

[Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

highly recommend-worth reading

I am so glad I read this book. Yolanda’s connection to her grandmother and the rest of her ancestors is heartwarming. So much of her explanations of her beliefs and faith are likewise helpful. I also really enjoyed her academic style. I enjoyed learning from reading this- both the academic perspective and the spiritual understanding.

[Kate Belt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recommend the audiobook, narrated by the author, but now plan to read it on the Kindle. Dr. Pierce is Dean at Vanderbilt Divinity School. Her style in this book in describing the experience of Black Women in the Christian church is more personal & accessible with less academic language than others I’ve read (or tried to read) about Black Womanist theology.