Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Women's History
Episode: Tisha Brooks, "Spirit Deep: Recovering the Sacred in Black Women’s Travel" (U Virginia Press, 2023)
Description: What would it mean for American and African American literary studies if readers took the spirituality and travel of Black women seriously? With Spirit Deep: Recovering the Sacred in Black Women’s Travel (U Virginia Press, 2023), Tisha Brooks addresses this question by focusing on three nineteenth-century Black women writers who merged the spiritual and travel narrative genres: Zilpha Elaw, Amanda Smith, and Nancy Prince. Brooks hereby challenges the divides between religious and literary studies, and between coerced and "free" passages within travel writing studies to reveal meaningful new connections in Black women’s writings. Bringing together both sacred...