Seeing Through the Lenses of Literature, Music, and Womanist Theology: A Q&A With Melanie R. Hill

The following is a Q&A with Melanie R. Hill, Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor of Global Racial Justice and Assistant Professor of American Literature at Rutgers University, Newark, and a classically trained gospel violinist, and author of Colored Women Sittin’ on High: Womanist Sermonic Practice in Literature and Music, publishing in April but available for pre-order now.

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What led you to write Colored Women Sittin’ on High: Womanist Sermonic Practice in Literature and Music? 

My time at the University of Pennsylvania opened an infinite world of possibilities for me, as both scholar and artist. To embrace multidimensionality in one’s research as both scholar and artist within the academy, augments one’s academic horizon. Literature, music, and womanist theology have always been my guiding compasses since the age of four. I can remember hearing the social justice and gender equity sermons from the mouths of Black preaching women in my home church in Virginia. I can also recall the blue and grace notes played on the Hammond B3 organ, coupled with psalms that uplifted my young soul into adulthood from Black preaching women. I became interested in the topic of my book after re-reading W.E.B. Du Bois’s 1903 text, The Souls of Black Folk. This was a book that I encountered as a first-year college student at the University of Virginia in my African American Studies seminar taught by Rev. Dr. Corey D.B. Walker. In graduate school years later, I saw this text with fresh eyes. After re-reading this canonical work, I kept asking myself, “Where are the women? Where are the women in the text? Where are the preaching women in The Souls of Black Folk?”

Black literature and music saved my life. Because of the theologically-centered environment in which I grew up, the violin became my voice, the pen became my literary sword and womanist preaching became my lifeline. As a young girl, I have always been surrounded by the things I loved and the concepts that shaped my identity, and most of all, my career: literature, music, and theology. Having grown up under two dynamic Black women preachers since the age of four, I have been surrounded by Black women who have prayed for me in my academic career, labored with me in my own music ministry, traveled with me, and stood by my side with wisdom, advice, and understanding. These revered praying and preaching moments that I have witnessed since the age of four have inspired my research and writing on the Black woman preacher as a cultural figure in the discourses of African American literature and music—inside and outside of the pulpit. As a child, I saw the pulpit transformed every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday when Black women stood to preach. The pulpit, for me, was not only about encountering the healing power of God, but also about witnessing the Black woman, often deemed “the mule of the world,” transform into a giant, embodying all-encompassing strength, in one of the most male-dominated, patriarchal platforms in ecclesiastical circles. The women in the pulpit and their social justice sermons resonated with me and others who looked like me: a young, Black girl with dreams, hopes, visions, and freedom manifestations for herself in a world that saw her as unworthy of high education or high achievements. The Black women preachers I knew embodied womanism to the fullest extent. 

Zora Neale Hurston is my literary muse. Her iconic piece of literature, Their Eyes Were Watching God opened a brand-new horizon for me where I began to see Black literature in its sermonic form. I began to see Black women literally and metaphorically become preaching women whose lives served as testimonies to not only themselves but also to their whole communities. I began to see the depths of the sermon—how it’s preached, lived, and embodied within Black literature. From writers, Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Gloria Naylor, Langston Hughes, Ann Allen Shockley, and so many others, I thought deeply about the ways in which Black women preachers are cultural figures and their sermons as an art form were represented in the Black literary canon. As I began brainstorming and fleshing out the womanist literature and sermons of Alice Walker, Rev. Dr. Katie Geneva Cannon, Bishop Dr. Barbara M. Amos, Rev. Dr. Sharon S. Riley, Rev. Dr. Renita J. Weems, and many other legacy-driven womanist preachers and writers, I started seeing Nanny’s written prophecy to Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God. I started to see the words Hurston wrote in 1936 manifest as flesh before my eyes as I witnessed the sermons of Black women preachers with its breadth and depth take flight in the souls of this nation and world. I started seeing through the lenses of literature, music, and womanist theology, Colored Women Sittin’ on High.

What was your goal for the book when you started, and did it change over time? 

My goal was to highlight Black women preachers and reveal preaching not as an aside through which the literary critique and observation of the sermonic form in Black literature is often seen, but as a necessary element in literature and music by which scholars continue to develop our understanding of the beautiful complexities of the Black literary canon. The art of preaching and the performative elements that accompany the Black preaching style are illustrated in this book to understand the function of the sermonic in literature and sound through the Black woman’s preaching voice as a site of social and cultural memory. I wanted readers to examine Black preaching women through all three areas of study: literature, music, and womanist theology. This was the goal in the beginning of the book and remained the goal throughout my writing and re-writing of the text. 

Over time, what expanded the book even more was my incorporation of seeing Black women musicians as metaphorical preachers in music. The ways in which I analyze the music of Aretha Franklin, Ms. Lauryn Hill, Jill Scott, Ursula Rucker, and so many other iconic Black women artists expands one’s sense of the meaning of what it means to preach. Colored Women Sittin’ on High also examines the ways in which Black women musicians literally and figuratively, through music, preach through poetry and song.

What did you find surprising while researching/writing this book?

There were so many surprising things I found while writing this book. One specific thing I found while looking through the personal archives of James Baldwin, was an unpublished poem in conversation with his 1954 play, The Amen Corner. In The Amen Corner, Baldwin centers a Black woman preacher, Margaret Alexander, and her church in his play. I am excited for the world to read this poem and witness its correlation to The Amen Corner.

Do you have any favorite quotes or passages from the book?

One of my favorite quotes from the book is Alice Walker’s impactful words to me, “Our preaching is our literature.”

One of my favorite passages from the book recounts my interviews with civil rights legend, Ruby Sales. Here is a short passage where we talk about music’s theological and revolutionary meanings in the twenty-first century freedom movement:

“In my conversations with Ruby, or ‘Mama Ruby’ as she’s affectionately called, we are always exploring the womanist framework within theology, discussing the ways in which womanist thought grows one’s consciousness and becomes dynamic, revolutionary, and a collective/communal testimony that reaches a higher level of consciousness. Communal, testimonial, revolutionary, supernatural, universal, describe fully the phenomenological approach of womanist sermonic practice through music and literature.

Analyzing music through a womanist lens is a regenerative, restorative practice. Ruby emphasizes the important concept of music’s role in social justice activism in past and current freedom movements. She asserts, ‘there is a universal language from the spirituals…it’s from the spirituals that we become a community again.’”

What are some of the key takeaways or insights that readers can expect to gain from reading your book?

A key takeaway or insight I want readers to gain from reading the book is the fervid impact Black women preachers have in this country and around the world. The prophetic vision Nanny had for Janie of wanting to “preach a great sermon about colored women sittin’ on high” in Their Eyes Were Watching God has quite literally manifested in the lives of so many Black women preachers in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I want readers to walk away knowing despite patriarchal hegemony, the intellectual, literary, musicological, and theological richness of Black preaching women carries significant weight. Black women preachers stand tall.

The historical context of my book stems from the roots of North American Christianity and how, through different denominations, the efficacy of Black women preachers as cultural figures coupled with their sermonic and sonic work counters social injustices in our country. This book not only acknowledges the prophetic scenarios in African American literature that speak to creating, producing, and discovering sermonic space regarding Black women prophets, musicians, and preachers, but through the lens of music and Black expressive culture, it also speaks to the making of sermonic space within the twenty-first-century freedom movement.  

What piece of advice would you offer authors that are currently writing their first book? 

For authors writing their first book, I would tell them these three things: “Write with love, compose with care, and lean into the melody of your own words. Keep going.”

What are you working on next/now?

Now, I’m working on my second book project, of which I already have the title. The expansiveness of my work on Black women preachers is not over. I feel it’s just beginning. I’m working on augmenting this project into different artistic forms. More literature and more music are both coming soon.