“A resonant, richly detailed study of the complex relationship between race and faith in America.” —Publishers Weekly

From celebrated scholar Dr. Yolanda Pierce comes this indelible meditation on Black faith, suffering, hope, and the healing possibilities of justice, written in the venerable tradition of James Cone and Kelly Brown Douglas.

What do we do with wounds--our own, others', and a nation's? We can turn away, avert our gaze. We can make a spectacle of suffering. Or like the doubting disciple who longed to touch Jesus's side, we can acquaint ourselves with the wounds: both the story they tell and the healing they prefigure.

In The Wounds Are the Witness, Yolanda Pierce, dean of Vanderbilt University Divinity School and author of In My Grandmother's House, weaves together her own memories, vignettes from Black life, and scenes from scripture, especially the passion of Christ. To work for liberation in a broken world, we cannot look away from crucified flesh. Bones from the Middle Passage, GI Bill benefits denied to Black veterans, women inmates shackled while giving birth: we must take all such wounds seriously. They testify to both the pain and the faith of a people.

With the lyrical eye of a poet and the moral precision of a preacher, Pierce casts readers into the astounding story of God's healing. From the curative powers of a spiderweb to the work of justice in history, politics, medicine, higher education, and the Black church, Pierce asks: Where are the remedies for the battered and broken? What does accountability look like? Is there any cure?

Healing takes time, Pierce writes, and even the wounds of the risen Christ do not immediately close. When the wounds become the witness, we find a faith reimagined and a hope transfigured. They tell the truth: about the extent of the injury and the extraordinary work of healing.

My Take:
At times a testimony of withness, and also witness, Pierce combines scripture, personal vignettes, scholarship and cultural references from people like to Tupac Shakur to expose the wounds Black Americans suffer to air. Through this reading, a few of my wounds began to scab over, and other were picked and bled a bit. All told, I will use this text as a salve for some of my exposed wounds and would recommend a reading for classrooms, social justice readers, theological students, womanist scholars and practitioners, those who study American and African American history and more.

I've recently deveoped the routine of reading books about the black experience, typically in Americna history. This was the first book I read that presented a picture of scripture through the eyes/experience of a black person that made me more aware of another's experience and at the same time awakened my understanding of scripture. Yolanda Pierce writes in a way that welcomes one to venture into what may seem like familiar territory, but you do it wearing different glasses.