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Full-Text Articles in African American Studies

All Men Created Equal: Flannery O'Connor Responds Communism, Nina Hefner May 2017

All Men Created Equal: Flannery O'Connor Responds Communism, Nina Hefner

English Class Publications

From her mother’s farm, Andalusia in Milledgeville, Georgia, Flannery O’Connor found her writing inspiration by observing the ways of the South. Naturally, a pervasive motif in her works is racism. For instance, in “Revelation” Ruby Turpin spends a good portion of the short story thanking God that she is neither white trash nor black. In her essay “Aligning the Psychological with the Theological: Doubling and Race in Flannery O’Connor’s Fiction,” Doreen Fowler points out that “[Ruby’s] insistence on setting racial boundaries has been an attempt to distinguish a white, superior identity” (81), equality with African Americans being Ruby Turpin’s ultimate …


Salvation Through Community And Protest, Hannah K. Griggs Jan 2017

Salvation Through Community And Protest, Hannah K. Griggs

Audre Lorde Writing Prize

This essay examines the theodicies of Nancy Pineda-Madrid, Kelly Brown Douglas, and Dorothee Soelle to strategize ways for Christians to combat rising threats to marginalized communities. Synthesizing the arguments of these three feminist Christians, I argue that only a theodicy of protest succeeds in accounting for structural injustice caused by kyriarchal relationships. As Christians come to terms with America’s current political situation, I call for a reimagining of Anselm’s salvation narrative. My protest theodicy theorizes a new Christian narrative that strives to alleviate this-worldly suffering in order to produce salvation through radical community, by “signifyin’” to disrupt power, and using …