| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

American Lazarus: Religion and the Rise of African-American and Native American Literatures. By Joanna Brooks. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. viii, 255 pp. $45.00, ISBN 0-19-516078-9.)

The search for the origins of Native and African American literature is an important, albeit elusive, project that deserves far greater critical attention. Joanna Brooks's American Lazarus takes up the challenge with mixed results, locating the "founding moments" in the era of the American Revolution with the work of Samson Occom, John Marrant, Prince Hall, Absalom Jones, and Richard Allen. Brooks makes an important contribution to the field by providing a detailed exegesis of the relationship between literature and the "new modes of American Christianity that honored the histories, customs, values, desires, and pleasures of black and Indian communities" (p. 180). This assertion is well documented and compelling, if one accepts the premise that "African- and Native American literatures first emerged out of [the] commitment" of black and Indian evangelists (p. 46, my emphasis). While these works deserve more scholarly attention, the fact that Brooks ignores the older forms of oral tradition and indigenous religions in order to focus solely on written works heavily indebted to Christianity risks reifying precisely the kind of Eurocentric definition of literature that Brooks sets out to transcend.

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