1

Taj Taher
Chrisman
ENGL 494
18 March 2016
Another Holy Trinity: Literacy, Identity, and Freedom
Hardly a more powerful symbol has existed in history than the Bible; individuals,
societies, and even entire civilizations have identified themselves based upon it. Setting all that
aside, however, the Bible literally the book is first and foremost a text. As such, the
formation of identity with respect to the Bible has as much to do with literacy as it does with
theology. Exemplary of this phenomenon was the one experienced by the African peoples
systematically enslaved during the 18th and 19th centuries, for whom Rhondda Thomas Robinson
writes in Claiming Exodus The Exodus narrative, the central cultural metanarrative of the AfroAtlantic community, resonated because it encouraged Afro-Atlantic peoples to remember the
story and reimagine themselves as citizens in their adopted homeland (Robinson 2). In
remembering the story, asserting themselves as the Children of Israel, and connecting their own
conditions to the liberation central to Exodus, the enslaved Africans brought together three
concepts which literary critic James Olney claims to be the omnipresent thematic trio of the
most important slave narratives (Olney 55): literacy, identity, and freedom. However, the nature
of this triad becomes problematic in the context of Exodus since the words of inspiration are
transmitted in the language of the Africans oppressors. A curious dialectic appears here because
the Africans self-conception of freedom is defined by the white mans literacy, the words on the
page promising liberation with its contents while shackling the enslaved with its constitution.
Rather than espousing their freedom, the Bible may actually curtail their agency and reiterate
their entrenchment in slavery.
To a certain extent, even the superficial contents of Exodus can be interpreted to subtly
rob the slaves of agency. In the narrative, the enslaved Israelites function as a McGuffin, the

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impetus for the storys major conflict and the means by which the tales true center Moses is
defined through character and action. When they are mentioned in the text, it is always to
emphasize their bitter conditions or characterize them as despondent and in need of saving, such
as when Moses first addresses them to promise freedom but they would not listen to Moses,
because of their broken spirit and their cruel slavery, (Ex 6.9). It becomes apparent that the
texts primary concern is highlighting the heroism of Moses and God. The text does generate
sympathy and compassion for the Israelites, but mostly in order to achieve its primary aim.
Although they are the central concern of the narrative, the text objectifies them and relegates
their role in the conflict to that of cattle to be herded.
One might argue the text invites the readers emotional connection to the Israelites
through Moses since he himself is technically a Hebrew, but on multiple occasions Exodus
makes evident that Moses is distinct from the rest of his people. His ability to address the
Pharaoh on whim and his repeated invocation to Let my people go rather than Let us go
suggests that Moses does not share in his peoples enslavement. This further establishes his
position as Gods anointed and increases the space between him and the Israelites. The Africans
likening themselves to the Israelites because of the similarity of their plights would thus also be
adopting the implication that they lack the ability to liberate themselves, that they need an
external savior. This becomes most clear when the Israelites finally do achieve freedom, for their
song in Exodus 15 makes no mention of themselves, only exalting God and Moses. Once
beholden to Egypt, the Israelites are now beholden to Moses, suggesting that they and by
extension the African slaves looking to their story for inspiration are intrinsically suited for
nothing more than servitude.
Such a reading of Exodus is not presented for the purpose of discrediting Africans claims
to adopting Christianity, or to suggest the Bible is a white mans book and thus inherently

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prejudiced towards Africans. Rather, the example illustrates the malleable nature of language and
raises the question of how literacy especially when that literacy confers liberation but
originates from the oppressors should be understood. Zakes Mda touches upon this issue of
Biblical literacy in Cion when the character Toloki says in my country it [the Bible] was used to
oppress and to fight against oppression. It was used to justify apartheid on the one hand, and the
liberation struggle on the other, (Mda 198). Not merely the ability to comprehend words on a
page, true literacy is a critical engagement with the text that depends on identity. Mda shows that
the Bibles repurposing is contingent upon who picks up the book. Their identity shapes their
interpretation, rather than the interpretation of the book shaping their identity. African slaves
likening themselves to the Israelites, however, extrapolate identity from the text, and that this
identity is transmitted through the language of their oppressors doubly spells serious
consequences for the kind of identity and freedom that is developed as a result. Adeleke
Adeekos analysis of the slave rebellion in Arna Bontempss Black Thunder in relation to its
texts historical context illustrates by way of contrast the ramifications of such an identity
formation, arguing Gabriels plot refutes the racist orthodoxy that views the intervention of
Communist International in the defense of those accused in the Scottsboro case as an indication
of black incapacity for autonomous thought and action. Blacks, Bontemps seems to have been
saying, do not need communists to teach them about their own revolutionary significance in
America, (Adeeko 79). In adopting the Exodus narrative, however, African slaves do just that.
Just as they are reliant upon an external savior to deliver them to freedom, they are reliant upon a
language not their own for deliverance as well, suggesting a passive acceptance of a convenient
history which results in a passive determination of fate.
Indeed, when observing the slaves passive Biblical literacy Bontemps presents in Black
Thunder, there is little doubt of their capability for autonomous thought that Adeeko claims, but

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the extent to which this thought is truly liberating is dubious. Bontemps boldly opens the chapter
which describes a freed African reading the Bible to his enslaved fellows with Mingo knew how
to read, (Bontemps 44). That Bontemps chooses to identify Mingo in terms of his literacy first
and foremost, before even making the reader aware of his freedom, demonstrates the immense
weight literacy holds in the collective consciousness. By attaching literacy to his free identity, the
amorphous concept of freedom is reified through Mingos corporeality and thus made physically
legitimate, justifying the slaves awe of him. However, it becomes apparent throughout the
chapter that reading the simple translation of ink to speech is the extent of Mingos
capability, as Bontemps includes Mingo thumbed the crimped pages awkwardly. Dont stop,
Mingo. Read some mo, Gabriel said. Thats the Scripture, aint it? Scripture, Mingo said.
Scripture (Bontemps 46). The lack of assertiveness with which Mingo wields the book
illustrates the tenuous nature of his literacy. He is a medium, a mode of transmission for the
words, rather than his own maker of meaning. His parroting of Gabriel without providing a
resonant answer (and indeed Gabriels own romantic reverence for the text) is indicative of their
infatuation with the symbolism of literacy, not literacy itself. Their spellbound wonder with the
words reflects their desire to seize this power of the white man in order to seize the white mans
freedom and dominance. Yet, this framework for liberation only serves to highlight their lack of
independence and activism. The consequences of this covetous literacy is mirrored in the
chapters form, as it is comprised almost entirely of Biblical passages and interspersed with very
little dialogue from the characters themselves, dialogue which reaffirms but provides no
interpretation of those passages. This mindless repetition indicates an enslavement of the mind as
much as the body, so the degree to which literacy with respect to the Bible actually provides
freedom becomes doubtful based on Bontempss presentation.

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Bontempss condemnation of forming an identity grounded in the white mans literacy is
made all the more apparent when he ties it directly to the failure of Gabriels revolt and contrasts
it with African spiritualism (conjure or voodoo). Reflecting upon the failed rebellion, one of the
slave elders says I dont know about all that reading the BookToussaint and them kilt a hog in
the woodsGabriel done forgetToo much listening to Mingo read a white mans book. They
aint paid attention to the signs, (Bontemps 166). Once more, the freedom Mingos literacy
confers is questioned, for although the words are spoken with African lips, those lips are moved
by white words, enslaving Mingo once more. The difference between Gabriel on the Christian
side and Toussaint on the African spiritual side is that the latter plays a part in his own destiny.
Mingo and Gabriel are blinded to their present by promises of the past, and that those promises
are conveyed in the words of the white man seems to be the issue. Toussaints identity appears to
be in unity with his present and his heritage, so that when his revolution succeeds, it seems to be
a culmination of his own thoughts and his own actions; Gabriels failure is a manifestation of his
enslavement to the white men and their ways of thinking.
This notion of agency relative to customs of conjure and voodoo is historically supported
in Kevin Butlers dissertation The creation of African American Christianity: Slavery and
religion in antebellum Missouri. Butler examines the aftermath of a Missouri slave rebellion
inspired by prophetic visions in the African tradition, stating the slaveholders would not accept
the possibility that it began with their slaves, but they had to attribute it to some outside influence
that seduced the slaves to follow them, (Butler 126). The slaveholders denial and insecurity
only reinforces the centrality of the slaves to their own uprising. Their own traditions, their own
beliefs, and their own selves spur the rebellion instead of external validation or salvation. The
slaves do not betray their identity in the present as Bontemps implies Gabriel does in adopting
the white mans literacy even though it is understood as a precondition of the past.

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From Bontempss presentation of the two in his novel, it may appear that Christian
literacy and African literacy are mutually exclusive. Historically, however, the two fused rather
readily. While many from outside black communities believed the slaves professed Christianity
a veil for their true African religiosity, Butler reports that the distinct Christianity of enslaved
black communities arose from a blending of Christian principles and African folk beliefs (Butler
162). The meteoric rise of the Black Church and a Black Christian consciousness after the Civil
War evidences that Christianity did not oust African tradition, but was assimilated readily
because many of its themes a higher power, the afterlife, and prophetic revelation were
already present in the latter. However, a major factor facilitating conversion to Christianity was
the shift away from Calvinism to Evangelicalism. The appeal for the latter stemmed from its
concepts of libertyspurred Americans to shun predestination in favor of beliefs that gave
people more control over their own destinyAfrican Americans had little use for Calvinism and
its implication that God had ordained for them to remain in their lowly status, (Butler 164).
Given the agency and hope Christianity provided the slaves, Black Thunder does not seem to be
condemning the contents of the Bible. Rather, Bontemps cautions Gabriels farsighted endeavor
for white ideals at the price of rejecting his own past and his own identity.
That engaging in such literacy becomes another form of complacency is asserted with
much more force in Yvette Christianss Unconfessed as it deals with the issue of literacy within
the historical context of Calvinism and colonialism. While in Bontempss novel the characters
look to the Book without prompting from their oppressors, Christianss Sila ironically enough
has the liberation promised by Scripture forced upon her. The reactionary hostility and
skepticism Sila harbors towards these promises, however, are tempered with a far more refined
understanding of literacy than Gabriel, for even at an early age she observes Bible lessons,
scratching on slate that spoke when you pointed at it and said what the missus said it said, and

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which then took on its chalk body, which transfixed her as she tried to understand what else it
was saying behind all the blood banging in her ears, (Christians 10). The relationship between
the oral tradition and written language presented in Black Thunder is echoed here, but unlike
Gabriel and his comrades who accept the words on the page as a direct or pure transmission of
thought, Sila recognizes that in committing thought to paper, that which is spoken by the words
is filtered and transformed. The process of writing seems like another form of colonial
enslavement since the chalk body simply repeats what the missus wants it to, inspiring
empathy within Sila evidenced by her transfixion, personification of it, and the human
connection to it for the written text. After all, she too is another body beholden to the missus.
This notion is especially interesting since Sila believes the chalk body has more to say
than simply what the missus wants it to, perhaps reflective of Silas desire to believe that she
herself has liberty of her mind, if not of her body. Identifying herself as the very words on the
page, Sila demonstrates that literacy provides the potential for freedom since the words once
written on the page escape the bounds of the original owners mind and become open to
interpretation. However, slaves like Gabriel or Silas colleague Mina among those who believe
baptism will confer liberation upon her children either do not understand this conception of
literacy or overlook the role of literacy altogether. As such, their engagement with the Bible is
characterized by blind deference since their enamored perception of the white mans words and
its promises make it so they only listen to and repeat what those words say, hearing what they
want to hear.
For Sila, this kind of literacy inspires her ire because it is an appropriation of the
colonialist culture of their oppressors, evidenced when she reflects They wanted usto make a
baby out of materials and strawwhat is this? The ministers wife said, baby Jesus, and Van
Graafwants us to learn how to read this black book. He said, this is sacred! Mina sang with

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all her heartEnglish songs for the minister and his wife. Dutch for Van Graf. Straw for the
goats who did not know this was a babyThe minister and his wife wanted us to stand with
goats, (Christians 124). To Sila, Mina has become nothing more than a goat by feeding on the
straw which is the white mans words and promises. True, the sustenance this provides is a
means by which Mina and her children can survive, but to Sila the identity formed by this
manner of literacy reinforces their enslavement and debases their humanity since they are
rendered nothing more than a domesticated animal. While the slaves stupidity is implied by
being likened to a goat, Sila finds as much fault of the same in her oppressors. Are the slaves
really stupid for not understanding the straw figure is a baby, or are the colonizers stupid for
believing the straw is anything more than that? Van Graf similarly looks beyond the reading of
the black book, only recognizing the symbolism of it being sacred. Again, the core of Silas
contempt rests not with Christianity, but the colonial culture of speaking for the words before
they have had a chance to speak for themselves, to assign meaning in order to justify a particular
desire.
It may be confounding to consider that as initially stated in this exploration the Bible
behaves as both a means of liberation and enslavement for these African peoples, but it must be
understood this arises from the very nature of the book itself. As the point of convergence for
history, literacy, identity, and freedom, the manner in which each of those elements is understood
and engaged with determines the perception of the Bible in its entirety. In a historical review of
colonialism and literacy, James Collins and Richard Blot write The languages used and the
literate means employed, the texts produced and read, tell us much of the construction and
transformation of selves through literate practices. Such selves are not formed by literacy; but the
forging, both social and personal, of a new hybrid identity occurs in the cauldron of culture
clash where literacy is both weapon and shield. Literacy is neither cause nor consequence; the

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process of self-formation, self-fashioning, is, rather, mediated by literacy, (Collins and Blot
122). The concerns of both Bontemps and Christians seem to be with exactly the
misconception Collins and Blot present: an identity shaped by the literacy of the slaves
oppressors, as related through the Bible. This literacy is incomplete; in Black Thunder it is
wielded entirely as a weapon, while in Unconfessed only as a shield. The characters failures to
perceive in relation to the Bible the capability to not only carry both those tools but also
manipulate them defines the disjunctive identity which reiterates their enslavement.
With identity informed by both literacy and history, the issue with the latter in the Bible
rests not with to whom that history belongs but how that history is assimilated into the present.
Eddie S. Glaudes In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America outlines
two different forms of historical self-conception, the blind deference to authority that
Bontemps and Christians criticize and the pragmatic conception. Glaudes concern with the
former is that it encourages a formation of present identity which is unable to extend beyond the
suffering of the past because it focuses only on outcomes and bottom-lines, not the experiences a
pragmatic conception highlights within those historical moments (Glaude 87). In what could be a
direct response to the consequences of literacy illustrated in Unconfessed and Black Thunder,
Glaude writes that his pragmatic conception of history foregoes the narrow terms of submission
and resistance. To attribute to agency a specified form and content prior to the actual experiences
is to abjure the active work individuals do in intelligently transforming situations, (Glaude 98).
It is not the Bible which further reinforces the conditions of slavery for the African peoples, but
their own limited frame of mind submission for slaves like Mina and resistance for slaves like
Gabriel that understands history, literacy, and identity as a set of objective outcomes which
curtails their agency and potential for finding freedom.

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For make no mistake: such potential does exist. Mdas Cion explores the literal liberation
art and artmaking provides when the two are not leashed by a blind deference to history. In a
testament to Glaudes process of intelligently transforming situations, an enslaved mother
makes quilts stitched with directions to freedom to give to her sons. The sons recognize,
however, that the Quilt designs did not map out the actual route to the Promised Land but
helped the seekers to remember those things that were important in their lives. They did the same
work as spirituals. Like the storiesof the old continent told, whose rhymes and rhythms forced
people never to forget them and the history they contained, the patterns and colors and designs
and ties and stitches of quilts were mnemonic, (Mda 118). Initially striking is the harmonious
blend of Christian and African tradition. The dichotomy presented in Black Thunder and
Unconfessed is here collapsed because Mdas characters perceive history as not simply a passive
precondition of the past, but an instrument which can be manipulated to inform the present. The
Abyssinian Queens literacy with regards to Scripture and African folk tales (if not literally the
comprehension of letters on a page, then her understanding and engagement with the oral
language) is directed by her identity, her desires, and her agency: as such, she does not feel like
she has to choose between Christianity and the African tradition. Her literacy is the product of
her both listening to the stories and stitching them together in a novel manner, a process that
respects the past but is rooted in the present. Gabriel and Mina merely seek to replicate the past
in order to bolster their present, eschewing the lived experience of the present which undermines
the potential for their own active contributions. Where these slaves failed, the two sons in Mdas
novel engaging in a pragmatic conception of historical literacy identify with the Children of
Israel in such a way that provides the inspiration not the deliverance to carry themselves to
freedom.

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As a reservoir for history, a medium for literacy, a root for identity, and an impetus for
freedom, the Bible engages the elements which James Olney considers crucial to the slave
narrative with its very essence. Investigating the manner in which each of these manifests within
the relationships between African slaves and the sacred text helps unravel the curious dialectic
concerning the two; the historical process of African slaves coming to know themselves beyond
the conditions of their enslavement apparently casts the Bible both shackle and key throughout
the era of slavery. However, it becomes evident the Bible cannot be restricted to any one narrow
definition, just as it cannot be restricted to the interpretation of any one individual. And this, it
seems, is its true power: imbued with themes which appeal to all humans, regardless of who they
are and where they come from, the text challenges humanity to consider itself, and it is this
which led Harper Lee to once write The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but
the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that.
Works Cited
Adeeko, Adeleke. The Slaves Rebellion: Literature, History, Orature. Bloomington and
Indianapolis: Indianapolis University Press, 2005. PDF. ENGL 494 Catalyst Site.
Bontemps, Arna. Black Thunder. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992. Print.
Butler, Kevin D. "The Creation of African American Christianity: Slavery and Religion in
Antebellum Missouri." Order No. 3204590 University of Missouri - Columbia, 2005.
Ann Arbor: ProQuest. Web. 17 Mar. 2016.
Christians, Yvette. Unconfessed. New York: Other Press, 2007. Print.
Collins, James, and Blot, Richard. Literacy and Literacies. West Nyack, NY, USA: Cambridge
University Press, 2003. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 17 March 2016.
Glaude, Eddie S.. In a Shade of Blue. Chicago, US: University of Chicago Press, 2008. ProQuest
ebrary. Web. 17 March 2016.
Mda, Zakes. Cion. New York City: Macmillan Press, 2007. Print.
The New Oxford Annotated Bible. 4th ed. Ed. Michael D. Coogan. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2010. Print.
Olney, James. I Was Born: Slave Narratives, Their Status as Autobiography and as
Literature. Callaloo 20 (Winter 1984): 46-73. ENGL 494 Catalyst Site.
Thomas, Rhondda Robinson. Claiming Exodus: A Cultural History of Afro-Atlantic Identity,
1774-1903. Waco: Baylor University Press, 2012. Project MUSE. Web. 17 Feb. 2016