Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan

Breaking Bread, Breaking Beats

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“With intellectual rigor as beautifully detailed as Baroque counterpoint and the creative impulses of improvisational jazz, Breaking Bread, Breaking Beats, via interdisciplinary, dialogical, and communal analysis wedding town (faith and social communities and professional hip hop artists) and gown (the academy), explores the intersections, juxtapositions, and reciprocal critique of the Black church and Hip Hop. The Center for Engaged Research and Collaborative Learning (CERCL) Writing Collective wax eloquently and cogently as they explore socio-cultural contextual issues from historical, economic, and political matters to embodiment, gender, race, dress, sexuality, identity, oppression, resistance, globalization, ethics, and cipher. The authors brilliantly tell the story of the nonmonolithic Black church and the diverse realities of hip-hop from the late twentieth century to the present. Breaking Bread, Breaking Beats is a must read for those interested in social history, black church, and Hip Hop.”

Deep Calls to Deep

History & Biography

“Yvette R. Blair-Lavallais takes us on an encyclopedic, creative interdisciplinary journey about the souls of Black folk, Black faith, and the Black religious institutions dedicated to exquisite pedagogical and social-justice education.... Deep Calls to Deep is a must-read for all persons curious about Black religious life, for all who view themselves as leaders of this tradition, and for social-justice activists everywhere.”

Fortress Commentary on the Bible

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“With the culinary artistry of a Julia Childs and a Wolfgang Puck, producing elegance, symmetry, and engaging knowledge, the Fortress Commentary on the Bible: The Old Testament and Apocrypha provides a wonderful smorgasbord of insight into the Hebrew Bible and Apocrypha with rich servings of literary, historical, and theological wisdom. With global, diverse voices and perspectives, contributors address texts in their ancient contexts and the textual interpretative traditions, and situate the texts in their contemporary milieus, always aware of their audiences. With the rich appetizers and entrees of sociocultural, literary, and political insights, this biblical commentary invites readers to gain insights that allow for marveling at the poetic and prophetic voices in the text, toward becoming responsible interpreters. This work is a must read for those with an appetite of curiosity, for those who desire a new recipe for reading, and for any who desire to have a one-volume biblical commentary that is exquisite and profound, yet quite accessible.”

Jesus, Jubilee, and the Politics of God’s Reign

Theology

“With the intimacy of a fireside chat, the precision of a neurological surgeon, the quest of an avid, curious adventurer, the deep compassion of pastoral-prophetic activism, and the artistry of a maestro conducting universal music, Christian Collins Winn provides a tour de force that offers a clarion call for all faith-believers to experience Jesus as the embodiment of the quintessential rule of God, which is ultimate, covenantal, self-giving love. “This work explores the reign of God, a metaphor used and abused to support myriad socio-political-ethical visions of reality. Such interpretive gymnastics often create a miseducated overlay of patriotism and faith. Collins Winn invites us to frame social ethics as responsible liberation. Jesus, Jubilee, and the Politics of God’s Reign makes a convincing case for Jubilee that exposes powers and principalities steeped in white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalistic misogyny, to interpret theologically the totality of Jesus’s life as resurrection justice. This volume is a must-read for those committed to following the way of Jesus and breaking free of traditional, institutionalized theological missteps.”

Katie’s Canon

Women

“To read Katie's Canon is to experience an African American spiritual in the making.”

Liberation and the Cosmos

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“With the erudition and poetic play of Toni Morrison and the pensive, probing humbleness of Howard Thurman, Liberation and the Cosmos is a tour de force honoring the mystical tradition and engaging voices of our elders with a call for liberation, reminding us that the future is now. Dr. Barbara Holmes's moving prose celebrates storytellers, dream keepers, and unique liberators, and embraces ancestors as she grapples with questions of freedom juxtaposed against liberation throughout this prophetic work. Through a series of constructive, imaginative conversations framed by a fertile imagination, contextualized by the 1960s civil rights movement, and including notable ancestral voices of law, literature, liberation-activism, music, education, and politics, Holmes renders a prophetic warning against lethargy in the quest for freedom. Quilting together African thought, liberation thought, and mystical imagination, she invites the reader to move toward moral fulfillment and emancipation. This book is a must-read for anyone who dares to engage spiritual energies and is curious about what it means to live a life of holistic liberation.”

The Biblical Mothers Deliver

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“Framed by poignant, clever concepts of ‘birthing Israel’s family’ and ‘mansplaining the mothers,’ Nancy Klancher uses Scripture and contemporary poetry to explore biblical stories of Old Testament/Hebrew Bible mothers. Writing accessibly, she reflects on sexuality, gender, motherhood, and ethnicity. This is a must-read for those interested in motherhood, female bodies, oppression, and centuries of biblical interpretation.”

The Genesis of Liberation

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“Like artisans—from great architects and choreographers to horticulturists and aerospace engineers—Powery and Sadler craft a vision, create historic scaffolding, and engage powerful thought and transformative events to orchestrate the function of the Bible by the antebellum enslaved. These scholars critically mine the use of Scriptures by enslaved persons regarding issues of pedagogy and communal identity, as they challenge slave holding ideology and the need to critique mainstream Christianity. The Genesis of Liberation is a must read for those curious about diametrically opposed hermeneutical trajectories, the questions of liberation and justice, the intricate signifying and complicated matrix of oppression welded against those of African descent, and the inclusive history of biblical interpretation and appropriation in the United States of America.”

The Quest for the Historical Satan

Theology

“The Quest for the Historical Satan excavates cultural, historical, religious, and morally constructed productions of evil within Christianity, from myth and legend to the complex ways people conjure the embodiment of evil and harm. De La Torre and Hernandez are engaging sleuths as they carefully examine Satan's conception and his presence in modernity and through the ages. They wrestle with the spiritual forces of evil, embarking on a historical quest that examines and juxtaposes notions of Good and Evil and justice and injustice. This is a riveting, compelling, and accessible text and is a must read for anyone who has entertained questions about theodicy, the demonic, and the capacity of every human being to do evil.”

Too Heavy a Yoke

Counseling, Grief & Mental Health

“A prayerful, prophetic, poetic, pastoral, powerful womanist analysis of the StrongBlackWoman, from an interdisciplinary, experiential perspective names the context, content, complexities, and pathology of many Black women's embodied archetypal, systemic oppression and posits hopeful options for a paradigmatic shift of recovery. Woven with artistry and passion, Too Heavy a Yoke is a must-read for clergy, therapists, caregivers, and any persons or groups committed to the liberation of black women, ultimately the liberation of all society.”