Shoutin' in the Fire: An American Epistle

by Danté Stewart (Author & Narrator)

A stirring meditation of being Black and learning to love in a loveless, anti-Black world

In Shoutin' in the Fire, Danté Stewart gives breathtaking language to his reckoning with the legacy of white supremacy--both the kind that hangs over our country and the kind that is internalized on a molecular level. Stewart uses his personal experiences as a vehicle to reclaim and reimagine spiritual virtues like rage, resilience, and remembrance--and explores how these virtues might function as a work of love against an unjust, unloving world.

In 2016, Stewart was a rising leader at the predominantly white evangelical church he and his family were attending in Augusta, Georgia. Like many young church leaders, Stewart was thrilled at the prospect of growing his voice and influence within the community, and he was excited to break barriers as the church's first Black preacher. But when Donald Trump began his campaign, so began the unearthing. Stewart started overhearing talk in the pews--comments ranging from microaggressions to outright hostility toward Black Americans. As this violence began to reveal itself en masse, Stewart quickly found himself isolated amid a people unraveled; this community of faith became the place where he and his family now found themselves most alone. This set Stewart on a journey--first out of the white church and then into a liberating pursuit of faith--by looking to the wisdom of the saints that have come before, including James H. Cone, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison, and by heeding the paradoxical humility of Jesus himself.

This sharply observed journey is an intimate meditation on coming of age in a time of terror. Stewart reveals the profound faith he discovered even after experiencing the violence of the American church: a faith that loves Blackness; speaks truth to pain and trauma; and pursues a truer, realer kind of love than the kind we're taught, a love that sets us free.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Race, Religion, Christian, Faith, Christianity

Audiobook

First published October 12, 2021

Reviews

[Raymond · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review first posted here: https://medium.com/ballasts-for-the-m...

Once upon a time Danté Stewart was in the Sunken Place. How so, you ask? The culprit was Stewart’s experiences in white evangelical church spaces where he was made to feel like he was not like other Black people, that he was the exception. As a result, he ran away from his Blackness and the Black church traditions and practices of his youth. In his own words he became “anti-Black”, but he didn’t stay in that state for long. The killings of unarmed Black people at the hands of police in the mid 2010s was when he woke up, when he reached his breaking point. Shoutin’ In The Fire: An American Epistle is Stewart’s Leave LOUD story, it is in the tradition of James Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Austin Channing Brown, and other writers and theologians of Black liberation.

Stewart has written a beautiful, descriptive, personal, and unapologetic memoir about his transformation. In this book, Stewart calls out the sins of white supremacy that are in the American church and society at large today and how the wages of these sins can produce a spiritual death in Black people. Stewart’s redemption begins after experiences with Black death and also with his exposure to Black writings from Baldwin, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Dr. James Cone, and others. These writings from the ancestors helped him as he transitioned to his own writing, tackling the issues of racism, white supremacy, and anti-Blackness.

This memoir has so much power behind it. There are passages in it that you will read and in response you will have no choice but to say in the Black church tradition “my, my, my”. Stewart has a Word for Black people in Shoutin’ in the Fire. He is trying to help set people free. The question is, are we ready? Read it and find out!

Thanks to NetGalley, Convergent Books, and Danté Stewart, for a free ARC copy in exchange for an honest review. This book will be released on October 12, 2021.

[Traci Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like what Stewart is talking about and find his life story to be interesting. The question of being Black Christian and American is worthy. The book gets redundant a bit and parts are over written.

[Alicia (PrettyBrownEyeReader) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was another anticipated release for me. I first heard of the author via social media. I saw several people reposting his tweets and as the publication date of the book approached I was curious to check it out.

The book is an epistle that chronicles the author’s experience of being Black in majority White American Christian spaces. The author expresses the conflict he felt during times of racial protest and White backlash while he worked in ministry.

To navigate his rising internal conflict, the author heavily reads Black authors, poets, thinkers and theologians. He quotes these readings frequently throughout the book. The epistle flows like a stream of consciousness, the thoughts and recollections are not linear and move between different points in the author’s life.

This book will appeal to many audiences: those who are interested in Black literature of any kind, those who want to understand the role white supremacy plays in American Christianity, those raised in the Black rural South, lovers of memoirs.

I was given the opportunity to review an advanced copy of this book via NetGalley.

[K.J. Ramsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful. Fierce. Honest. Generous.

[Rose Peterson · Rating 3 out of 5]

While Stewart is definitely speaking truth to power in this book, I found what he was saying to be more important than how he was saying it. It's clear Stewart was trying to write in the tradition of the likes of James Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi Coates, but he falls short. It doesn't surprise me that Stewart is a pastor; in his writing, I felt like I was being held at a distance, like I was a removed parishioner, the distance between the pulpit and the pew yawning wide. He sprinkled in a few personal anecdotes, but I wasn't immersed in his writing.

By the end, I was skimming most pages. The content felt redundant, and I wasn't sure what original insights Stewart was shedding. The first chapter felt the most like it was touching on his unique contributions to this genre, exploring his fraught relationship with the Christian church, but he largely left that behind in the chapters that follow. (I understand this, though--it's crucial to center Blackness in the face of a society--and church--that operate solely with whiteness in mind.) I thought more of this book would center on the church and Stewart's quest to reconcile Christianity and Blackness and Americanness and might even feel its way toward a new way of moving forward, but it didn't really do any of that.

I also wonder who Stewart's audience is...and if he knew who his audience was. Explicitly calling this book an epistle makes me think it was intended to be a letter to the church, but I'm curious beyond that. I know white Christians would expect more scripture in this, devaluing personal experience as knowledge as they do. It also felt, though, like Stewart repeats many truisms that Black Americans would already know. Maybe he cast his net too wide to be effective?

The best part of the book by far was when Stewart said that if white Christians have the imagination to see the symbolism in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, they certainly have the imaginative capacity to imagine a god who loves Black people. I've always hated white Christians' obsession with CS Lewis and am obsessed with this brilliant insult.

[BookOfCinz · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am always interested to read more about Black Christians in white spaces- specifically the church, so when I read the blurb for this book, I immediately wanted to learn more. I also, loved the title.

Dante Stewart details being born and raised in a largely pentecostal church and leaving it for a white mega church. I how he details the differences and questions "do I really know God?". I loved the bits where we talked about his person experiences but I felt it dragged a bit and was a bit repetitive. I wished he had stuck more to the personal experience.

[Adam Shields · Rating 5 out of 5]

Summary: A beautiful, poetic memoir of being Black in America. 

Without question, this is one of the best memoirs I have ever read. I know part of my love of it is because Danté Stewart read the audiobook with his beautiful voice. Shoutin' in the Fire is a book of lyrical, poetic writing, and I can't imagine another narrator could have captured it as well. The prose reminds me in the very best way of James Baldwin. I know that will be a standard comparison, not just because of how prominent Baldwin is but also because of how frequently Stewart references him. Baldwin is an author for this age, as Eddie Glaude has written. I don't want to overplay that comparison, their life experiences are so very different, but also they are both Black in America, with a view of both history and the future and with an eye to the church that this country loves to pay lip service to, but not carry through as it should.

I remember thinking to myself, and maybe saying out loud, at some point years ago, early in my awakening to the racial realities of this world, that as much as they are accurate, I wished there were more books by Black authors that were happier, less wrapped up in pain. The pain is hard to process as a middle-aged white man because it creates an obligation. Observing pain and not responding is a type of pathology that some are commending these days, as some call for resistance to empathy. It took me time to learn and process not just that pain and trauma need recounting, but that the history of race in America means no story can be told by Black authors that does not have pain somewhere in the lens, even if not in the direct words. It took me much longer to see that the very act of writing was an act of hope. I didn't understand the complaints of Ta'Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me being hopeless. Coates is not hopeless, as I think this video with Thabiti Anyabwile shows. But the hope does not always have to be centered if the presenting problem denies reality.

The other comparison I feel when I read Shoutin' in the Fire is with Esau McCaulley's Reading While Black. Both books have a chapter on rage, and in both cases, I think the chapter is likely the most powerful in the book. That rage is not a denial of hope; both explicitly point to hope in other places and even in their rage. Both reference James Baldwin's famous quote about rage that often is shortened to only the first sentence. But the more extended quote is essential:

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost, almost all of the time — and in one's work. And part of the rage is this: It isn't only what is happening to you. But it's what's happening all around you and all of the time in the face of the most extraordinary and criminal indifference, indifference of most white people in this country, and their ignorance. Now, since this is so, it's a great temptation to simplify the issues under the illusion that if you simplify them enough, people will recognize them. I think this illusion is very dangerous because, in fact, it isn't the way it works. A complex thing can't be made simple. You simply have to try to deal with it in all its complexity and hope to get that complexity across.

Stewart makes the statement that echoes James Baldwin and James Cone and Howard Thurman, and many others; he comments that he thought that telling people the reality of what it means to be Black in America would cause white people, especially white Christians, to change. But each of them has to grapple with the fact that simple information is not enough. Cultural change is more complex than simple information, especially when resistance to identifying that change is necessary or even that culture comes into play.

Books like Shoutin' in the Fire are a gift to white people such as myself. They should be fuel to create understanding, empathy, and motivation to change institutions, especially Christian ones, that are resistant to change. Instead, mostly what we have is discussions of methodology, not discussions of the actual problem. Danté Stewart presents the evidence of his own life, the harm he has felt, the fear he has for his family, especially his children, in the future. To be allowed to read books, especially beautifully written books like this one, is a gift that more need to take up.

[Aimee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my 50th book of the year, and I couldn't have picked a more important book to act as my marker. Shoutin in the fire was not written to explain racism to white people. Nor am I able to use this book or any other book for that matter to fully understand and feel the prejudices that occur in America to black people every day.

As white women that grew up in a predominately white congregation, this memoir felt like a 💡 moment

Because I don’t remember race ever being discussed in church. Everything was white washed and sparkly at all times. Far removed from “secular” issues. told to shield away from “actions of the wicked” and rely on faith. Which is like asking a congregation to ignore the next door neighbors house on fire that has women and children inside.

I’ve never had a conversation with anyone
on the racial division of worship and church congregations. So it opened the window for me to glimpse and learn about a black man's experience attending a white congregation and the realization of becoming, in his words, “anti-black.”

“White supremacy was not just about terrible white American men in white hoods with white crosses. It was also about all the terrible ways I learned how to harm black people
and be terrible to black people and not listen to black people and not cry over black people and not care about black people and do it all in the name of Jesus. “

After the Alton Brown murder and the subsequent videos showing the violent attacks and murder of black men at the hands of police brutality such as the victim Philando Castile, Trayvon and Stephon Clark. He slowly opened his eyes to the microaggressions and indifference within his church and himself. He masterfully writes his experience of deconstructing his belief system to intertwine blackness and faith.
And then he channeled his new found rage into a call for change using writing and becoming a teacher as a tool.

“Rage has a way of making us stand up. Of freeing us from fear, rage made me stop running, and it made me stop lying. Soon rage would put my faith back together in all the ways it was shattered. “

I loved how he writes and I felt the urge to highlight every other paragraph. Like I was holding onto literature that was essential and sacred.

I also feel the need to shove it in the hands of everyone around me.

James Baldwin wrote: “Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity and fear.”

.. Fyi last year FANTA BILITY a beautiful 8 year old girl was leaving a high school football game to watch her sister cheer. She was shot and killed in the parking lot by three police officers that night.
The officers were sentenced to PROBATION for the murder this week.
#saytheirnames
https://sayevery.name/

[Heather Bottoms · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is equal parts memoir, meditation, confession, and lament about one young man’s experience of being black, Christian, and American. It is a powerful, often times poetic look at a life little known to me. I was grateful for the opportunity to sit quietly, pay attention, and try to see through his eyes for a bit. Stewart really breaks open his heart to show you his own struggles and fears. He holds no punches as he shares what it is like for him to live in a black body in a country built on a foundation of white supremacy. He also tells of the importance of loving his own blackness and celebrating the black community. It is a book by and for black people, but it was helpful for me to read.

[Haven Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book tells the journey of Danté Stewart who grew up in the rural Black southern church who came to search for acceptance in white evangelical Christianity before coming to the halting reality that he would never be at home there. As he puts it, “I needed to be around folk who knew Jesus was a penniless preacher from the poor side of Nazareth. I needed to be around folk, like my grandmama and granddaddy who prayed and faced down empires but still were living. I needed, as Toni Morrison writes, to grow up Black again.”

This was was a stunning and sinking reminder of the white supremacy in the American church and the way it has harmed and delegitimized Black humanity again and again. Stewart is a prolific reader and poetic writer who embraces the “legitimacy and genius of our Black tradition” through the integration of words from writers like James Baldwin and Toni Morrison.

He has found his way home and encourages others to do the same; to realize the beauty in the hot, sweaty sermons and fellowship halls and familial ties they grew up in. He encourages them to set down their idea of a white Jesus and embrace the resurrection that comes from accepting their own humanity through a Jesus that has set them free.

[Lisa notes · Rating 4 out of 5]

“When this country gonna love us?” he asked. “I don’t know, bro,” I said.
– Danté Stewart

We don’t like talking about this subject: white supremacy at church.

As a white person, we don’t usually see white supremacy.

Because we’re white.

If we really want to know if it’s there, we need to ask a Black person instead.

If you don’t know a Black person to ask (or you’re not comfortable doing so), read this book.

Stewart was a rising Black preacher in a predominantly white space. Until he no longer wanted to be there.

“As I looked around the church, it wasn’t just that I didn’t see people who looked like me. It was that I didn’t see the sadness, the anger, the rage that was crying out in my body. I didn’t see us, I didn’t feel us, I didn’t hear us. We were invisible.”

How can do better than this? What can we do differently?

The first step is to come clean. Get out of denial.

Stewart writes,

“The message became clearer: White supremacy was still our greatest sin and our deepest delusion.”

Stewart helps us break our delusion if we'll lean into his words and take them seriously.

My thanks to NetGalley + Convergent Books for the review copy of this book.

[Trish Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This powerful book is real and raw, painful and beautiful. Dante Stewart uses his considerable writing skill to share his experience of running from his Black, Pentecostal upbringing into the arms of a white reformed Christianity that felt like arrival and acceptance until it came to feel like he’d abandoned the most important core of who he was. His story of fighting his way out of this predicament and forward into the man he is called to be will stay with and inspire readers. There is so much here to consider about who we are as a nation. I’m grateful to have read this book and look forward to more from this author. Thanks to NetGalley for providing a copy of this book.

[Terry Stokes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stewart has such a unique, distinctive style of writing. The short sentences, the down-home storytelling, really drew me in. He gives voice to many experiences of being Black in white Christian spaces that I share and had not thought to articulate so incisively. I was left wanting a little bit more memoir/autobiography/narrative to contextualize his more conceptual musings.

[Stephanie Ridiculous · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully written insight into Stewart's personal experiences, which are a useful context for grappling with the American church at large. Painful to read about his experiences within white Christian spaces & moving to read his reflections on this Country and the beauty of Black folks.

[Matthew Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book, but it was a frustrating read. Stewart is repetitive, and often undermines his very real, very important points about America by going way overboard with hyperbolic assertions. (For example: “We have to face the depressing, even violent reality: We are living in a loveless world.”)

Stewart misses so many opportunities to teach us from his life. Pages upon pages are spent talking about his grief and despair, yet, apart from a few anecdotes, he shuts the reader out. I wanted to hear more about his experience in a white church, both when he was happy there and when he knew he had to leave. These experiences are somehow written about extensively and glossed over at the same time, leaving the impression of vulnerability without actually being vulnerable.

Blackness is celebrated, but if you want a deeper look into Black joy, this book won’t help. Even when celebrating Blackness, there is a depressing pall over the writing that makes Black joy seem like something Stewart is parroting without ever having personally experienced it. If you are in a place in your life where you need to wallow in grief and despair (and I’m not being facetious - there is a time and place for that), then this book might be what you need. But I hope you make it to the other side of grief. I hope Stewart does too.

When any artist is young and inexperienced, he mimics his inspirations. But, like Ta-Nehesi Coates, Stewart wants to write like James Baldwin without the hard self-examination and lived experiences of Baldwin. With more life experience (Stewart is VERY young), more love, more healing, Stewart could very well turn into an important voice.

[Kristin · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Racism continues because white people don’t feel it. They think it, they discuss it, but they don’t know how it feels. They don’t know the weight. They don’t know the devastation. They don’t know,” wrote Caribbean-born SF Chronicle contributor George McCalman quoting a Black friend. I thought of this quote when reading Dante Stewart’s memoir Shoutin’ In the Fire as he describes the weight of racism throughout his life. He describes the devastation when Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, and other Black people were killed by police, when white evangelical church members did not value Black lives, and when a white man took pictures of him while he was running in his neighborhood because he thought Stewart didn’t belong there. Stewart is a powerful and vivid writer who shares important commentary about rage, love, Black bodies, faith, resilience, hope and much more. His wisdom is an ode to Blackness, in the words of one reviewer, and helps white readers see our country more honestly. I admired his vulnerability about his own struggles and his reverence for Black authors such as James Baldwin and Toni Morrison and I learned a lot from this book. While I sometimes took breaks from the intensity of the pain in this book (realizing that being able to do this is an immense privilege) and sometimes struggled to see how different topics connected, as I like more structure in books, overall I’m glad I read this book and I recommend it. Books like this one gives us a way to see through others' eyes and can help us build a world that values everyone’s stories.

[Alisa]

I appreciated this memoir because I am sick and tired of *some* people believing (pretending?) that there is only one correct version of Christianity. The author has been there and back again, and his honesty is raw and necessary. I feel proud of my faith when I see the many different expressions of it. I'm glad that so many flavors exist, and I'm happy that Danté Stewart so gracefully expresses the beauty in Black American Christianity.

Some of the things that particularly stood out to me:
- the difference between white rage and black rage
- rage as a spiritual expression
- "We were not looking for hope. We were looking for love."
- the explanation of Black Jesus
- nostalgia as a tool of erasure

I think this would work well as an audiobook bc it's written in a flowing, repetitive style that reminds me of spoken word poetry or call & response.

[Matthew Manchester · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm pretty sure this is my favorite book of 2021 and we're only in March.

SUMMARY

Stewart writes about his personal and religious journey to loving blackness (and all that contains) and black people.

This book reminds me of Between the World and Me (by Ta-Nehisi Coates), yet I found this book even better. The spiritual angle and the dedication to lifting up and loving black people really makes it different than many of the same kind of books.

THE GOOD

First, STEWART CAN WRITE. Holy crap his prose is good. His tongue, his pen, his fingers, his mind, his art -- incredible.

Second, Stewart bleeds with passion for black people. He cheers, cries, celebrates, and contends for black people. There's so much love in these pages.

THE PERSONAL

And on a personal note, that's what this book gave me: a love for black people and black culture. I felt my heart change while reading this book. I've read plenty of racism and antiracist books. I've tried to advocate and be the best friend in my circle of people I'm around day-to-day. I've pitied black people. I've admired black people. But that doesn't mean I've loved or celebrated black people or have delighted in their culture, their art, or their writings. Or all the marks they continue to make on the world and all the ways they are filled with worthiness and dignity for just being themselves.

His story also concerns current Reformed teachers and books. As a Pentecostal --> Reformed person myself, this book hit close to home. And I see and agree with him.

CONCLUSION

First, Christians, with no delay, read this book.

Second, everyone else, with no delay, read this book.

And may love overflowing and abounding for black people be the result.

Five stars, six if I could.

[gabby h · Rating 5 out of 5]

I imagine this book would be challenging for many white Christians so I would encourage anyone to read it and rise to that challenge. It is a near perfect wording for what being a black Christian can look like and what American Christianity needs to understand. 10/10 recommend

“Grateful. I soon learned that I was not like the other Black people; I was the exception.”

“My Christian identity was more important than my racial identity. I just wish that was true when I walked out the church doors.”

“White supremacy was not just about terrible white American men in white hoods with white crosses. It was also about all the terrible ways I learned how to harm Black people and be terrible to Black people and not listen to Black people and not cry over Black people and not care about Black people and to do it all in the name of Jesus.”

“Only problem is, in their mind, our reality didn’t exist.”

“I had gotten used to the people I was around sanitizing King, making him the prophet of white gradualism and colorblind Christianity.”

“Calls for unity were an excuse for silence in the face of Christian complicity in abuse, injustice, and disrespect.”

“I learned that Jesus does not forget bodies, despised and abused bodies, but becomes good news to them by remembering them, touching them and being touched, and creating a world where their bodies are liberated, redeemed, and resurrected.”

[Gracey Jo]

It took me a while to get through this book, because it's heavy. There's a lot to digest chapter after chapter, and I felt like I couldn't honor and hold the stories within this book by reading through it quickly- it's heartbreaking and hopeful.

[Oscreads · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful and real AF book right here.

[Rachel | All the RAD Reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

a perfect juneteenth read. 🔥 @stewartdantec wrote a powerful, important, heartbreakingly honest, unflinching, stunning work of art with this one, and it grieved me (i still have tears in my eyes from how deeply it impacted me), gave me hope, made me rage, and made me reflect. an absolute must-read, and danté is a must-follow, too. what a gift his words are. masterful.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's been almost 2 years since the murder of George Floyd. That summer was one time I thought I had hope in discussing racism among my white friends. That lasted about 6 weeks.

White fatigue.

So, when I am comfortable as a white man, would I read a book like this? Stewart shouts at my white privilege and challenges my status. Since I'm the guy who has nothing on the line, why do I even pick this book up?

I need Stewart's story. I need his fire. I need to feel his exhaustion. I want racism dealt with in our nation so I struggle through when I don't have to. Black Americans are exhausted and I need to somehow pick up the cause and in some way help carry it with each one of my friends.

We can NOT be "done" with the conversation. So, I pick up Stewart's book and read his story. I read his struggle. His love. His passion. His rage. He is very much in the vein of James Baldwin in his style. It is story. HIS story. And it's worth hearing.

"We are alive, we are breathing, we are here. We catch our breath. We are exhausted, but we catch our breath again." (p. 254)

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I’m honest this book hurt my feelings in a lot of places, as a white person, as a Christian, as a football fan, but I learned a lot. I like to think of myself as a “well meaning” person and this book made me see how many times I’ve been offensive. It will stick with me for a long time. I wish everyone would read this and allow their minds to be opened and amazed at the hope and faith of black culture. “Ignorance is not protection from the rot, it gives the rot his power and longevity”.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

A prophet and poet of the highest order. Will be revisiting this one.

[David Cook · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a powerful, valuable, and raw book. In Shoutin’ in the Fire, Danté Stewart gives breathtaking language to his reckoning with the legacy of white supremacy, on a general level and very personal level. Stewart writes of an early experience as a Clemson football player getting lost on the way back to campus one night and being stopped by 2 police officers for driving while black in the “wrong” neighborhood. It is an all-too-common story.

Stewart blends personal narrative and storytelling to discuss his experience as a Black man who has struggled to understand his identity in a world that primarily values and affirms whiteness. He bluntly shares his college years at Clemson, where his identity as a person of value came from his talent as a football player. Later he addresses his experience in mostly white evangelical Christianity where he felt the need to deemphasize his Blackness almost unknowingly rejecting his family’s long legacy in the black church. Stewart describes embracing Blackness in part because of police brutality against Black men.

He includes moving accounts of his relatives, who experienced racism and prejudice their entire life and yet were reluctant to share their pain. After college Stewart was a rising leader at the predominantly white evangelical church he and his family were attending. He enjoyed the possibility of future ministry and growth and was excited to break barriers as the church’s first Black preacher. When Donald Trump began his campaign, dormant racism began to come into the open. Stewart found himself isolated amid co-religionists who seemed oblivious at best and embracing rising racism and worst. As a result of the pain and discomfort, Stewart felt alone in his church community. This set Stewart on a journey of rediscovering blackness and the black church.

This book is a personal journey that the reader is allowed to observe. It is an intimate story during a profoundly difficult time when racism has once again found fertile soil. I listened to the audio version in the author’s own voice. I often listen to books when doing yard work or home projects. There were moments when the pain was so genuine and palpable that I would stop what I was doing and just sit and listen. Sometimes I was moved to tears and deep reflection.

The only reason I give this book 4 stars and not 5 is the writing could be tighter and more concise.

[Laura S]

“Vulnerable” is the word that came to mind repeatedly as I read Stewart’s personal experience as a Black man in America. It is a perspective that I cannot truly understand because of my inherited demographics and sometimes it feels very uncomfortable. This is just one reason that I have sought to understand more.

The parts of this book that pique my sorrow the most are when Stewart connects his pain with the Church. It is true that church is made up of broken, imperfect people. Even so, this cannot be our excuse for minimizing messages such as his because Stewart is not alone. His thoughts echo those held by many of our brothers and sisters who are beginning to find space to speak of the pain that has been collectively suppressed for so long.

For myself, I can’t say that I have an idea of how I can partner with God to bring justice of this kind to the communities I am connected with, but reaching this level of understanding has been a paradigm shift for me.

I have sorrow for friends who have been with me through the darkest times of my life yet have not felt they could talk openly with me about their experience of being Black. Can I blame them, though? I cannot say that I would have had the wisdom to respond in ways that wouldn’t have caused them more pain and feelings of isolation. I hope that through my growing understanding I can be a better friend and that I will be a part of God’s work of restoration and healing. Perfect love drives out fear (1 John 4:18).

[Kyle Inman · Rating 3 out of 5]

So this book had some shining moments; one of my main recurring thoughts was that Dante Stewart would be a good man to know (I’m certain we would be friends 👀). Most of its shortcomings for me come from the book feeling pretty scattered. This made it seem a bit more like a general stream of everyday thought than a book, much less an epistle. On that note, I think calling this an “epistle” felt a little misleading as well. Not only that, there were some questionable theological ideas thrown out at times, ones that would even push against what the global, multi-ethnic, capital-C Church would affirm. All I’ll say on that note is that it becomes truly risky to read any particular pre-conceived narrative on to Scripture, though we can never fully divorce our own stories from the text. The primary reason I bring it up in my review, to be blunt, is that this is the same way oppressors have handled the text, and our call as Christians is not to simply employ the same tactics, but to be holy, and thereby use set-apart tactics instead, lest we fall into the same gnarled trap. I’d be happy to give examples and suggestions over the dinner table. :)

I’ve said a lot; to sum it up, this book proposed some good things, and this book proposed some bad things, and this book helpfully communicated the lived experience of someone who doesn’t look like me. There’s value in that, albeit not must-read value on the level of others I could point to, others that Stewart references.

[Whitney Campbell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m teetering between a 4 and 4.5 on this one. I feel like I would have maybe rated this one higher had I not read Black on Black right before this. That may not be fair to this book. It could be that or just where I am in my black journey right now. I feel like this book was about de-centering whiteness and getting away from the white gaze but doing it in a way that says white gaze, do you see me not seeing you? It also felt like he was still talking about blackness in relation to whiteness and I just wanted it to say forgot what white people are going to say or think about any of it, here’s my black life that matter and doesn’t need to prove it’s worth. I’m addition to all of this, I also feel like I couldn’t land in the same place as he did with religion and faith being so much of the religion and faith given to us by our captors. I do however appreciate reclaiming it and making it mean something different that what was given. I also appreciate what community means in the faith context. I wanted a little more acknowledgement that there has also been much hurt perpetuated in the name of Jesus even within the community. This book gave me all kinds of complicated feelings which I appreciated. It made me get critical and thoughtful of how I have navigated this black life of mine and often in majority white spaces.

[Jeremiah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having read and really enjoyed articles and blog posts from this author for several years, I'd had his first book on my to-read list since it released. In my experience, often writers will struggle to make the jump to the longer form and turn in an underwhelming debut. This was the opposite of that. 

The man can write. I absolutely love his writing style and it was the rare book that I couldn't put down. He completely pours his heart out on these pages as he recounts his experience of growing up, learning to live and keep going, navigating life and trauma as a Black man in rural South Carolina and other places in the United States. He writes in a way that engages all of the reader's senses. The book is both raw and intellectual, emotional and resilient. It is poetic, rage-filled, hope-filled, and brutally honest even when it makes him look bad. 

In summary: the author's full humanity is on display, in a beautiful clapback at a world that has downplayed it. His Christian faith also permeates the pages, modeling Jesus in both his rage and lament. There's much more I could say but I will just advise readers to pick it up for themselves. The highlights I've included don't convey the full picture of how well written it is. It's his story to tell, and he does it as skillfully and authentically as any writer I've encountered.