Black female writers' perspective on religion: Alice Walker and Calixthe Beyala

Journal of Third World Studies, Spring 2002 by Mainimo, Wirba Ibrahim

NOTES

1. Nancy Woloch, Women and the American Experience (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), p. 141.

2. Will Herberg, Protestant-Catholic-Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology (1955-1960) (Garden City, New York: Anchor, 1983), p. 13.

3. Quoted in Richard Chase, The American Novel and its Tradition (New York: Gordian Press, 1978), p. 146.

4. William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming" in The New Oxford Book of English Verse Helen Gardner (ed.). (Oxford University Press, 1972), pp. 820821.

5. For more on the writings of Thomas Hardy see John Powell Ward, Thomas Hardy's Poetry (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1993).

6. Allan R. Shucard, Countee Cullen (Boston:Twainyne Publishers, 1984), p. 35.

7. Allan R. Shucard, Countee Cullen, p. 36.

8. Countee Cullen, "Pagan Prayer" in Color (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1925), p. 21.

9. Frederick Douglas's classic autobiographical work, The Narrative of the ife of Frederick Douglas, An American Slave Told by Himself (London: Harvard University Press, 1960), contains many instances of Christianity's lending of support to the continued enslavement of the black people in America. He notes for instance how "It is an unpardonable sin to teach a slave how to read and write in this Christian country", p. 96.

10. Carolyn Wedin Sylvander, James Baldwin (New York: Frederick Ungar Publication Co.,1980), p. 96.

11. Ernest Bradford, "Toward a View of the Influence of Religion on Black Literature" in CLA Journal (vol. 27, no 1, September, 1983), pp. 18-19.

12. J.P. Clark, "Mie", A Decade of Tongues (London: Longman, 1981), p. 30.

13. J.P. Clark, "Ivbie", p. 31.

14. Elliot P. Skinner, Peoples and Cultures of Africa (New York: Doubleday, 1973), p. 632

15. Linda Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Rights (New York: Penguin Books, 1990), p. 8.

16. For this, and more, see Flora Alexander, Contemporary Women Novelists. (London: Edward Arnold, 1989), p. 3.

17. For more on Mary Daly's project of demithifying religious institutions of patriarchal myths, see her works, Beyond God the Father (New York: Women's Press, 1986), Pure Last: Elemental Feminist Philosophy (New York: Women's Press, 1984) and Gyn/Ecology: the Mataethics of Radical Feminism (New York: Women's Press 1979).

18. Maggie Humm, Feminist Criticism: Women as Contemporary Critics (Sussex: The Harvester Press, 1986), p. 94.

19. Quoted in Flora Alexander, Contemporary Women Novelists, p. 4.

20. In connection with the issue of putting in place a separate women's culture, Letty Cottin Pogrebin has posited the negative observation that, "Obviously, a convent, though a woman's world, is not a female institution; it is run by the church and churches are male-owned and operated" in Among Friends (New York: Mcgraw-Hill Book Company, 1987), p. 301.

21. Jacquelyn Grant, "Black Theology and The Black Woman" in Words of Fire: An Anthology of American Feminist Thought (New York: The New Press, 1995), p. 320.

22. Jacquelyn Grant, "Black Theology and The Black Woman", p. 328.

23. Maya Angelou, The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (New York: Random House, 1994), p. 19.