Caught up in the Spirit! : Teaching for Womanist Liberation

This book promotes the author's work in the college classroom as a black male professor of womanism. First and foremost, this book illustrates the self-transformative power of Alice Walkers concept of a womanist. Caught Up in the Spirit! also foregrounds powerful writings by students who have studied African American literature with the author. Today, Alice Walker and bell hooks, among other leading gender progressive black women and women of color, have conceptualized an inclusive vision of feminism that is open to all people. As a pedagogical case study documenting students across differences of race, gender, class, sexuality, and nation-state to embrace womanism through strategic dialogue, the author aims to show: 1) That the African American struggle for racial equality must be inextricably linked to the eradication of patriarchal, sexist, classist, and homophobic notions of black identity; and 2) that black feminist intersectional theory offers all students (of color as well as white students) a liberatory experience of pro-feminist, womanist black female and male authors writing to call out and stand against all forms of oppression and domination.