It takes a powerful imagination, grounded in historical experience, to uncover the great mysteries of black life. “We have been in the storm so long,” “tossed and driven,” singing and praying, weeping and wailing, trying to carve out some meaning in tragic situations. The beauty in black existence is as real as the brutality, and the beauty prevents the brutality from having the final word. Black suffering needs radical and creative voices, prophetic advocates who can tell brutal and beautiful stories of how oppressed black people survived with a measure of dignity when they were not meant to.
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