Colored Women Sittin’ on High

Womanist Sermonic Practice in Literature and Music

By Melanie R. Hill

Colored Women Sittin’ on High

Approx. 320 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 15 halftones, notes, bibl., index

  • Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4696-8509-0
    Published: May 2025
  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4696-8508-3
    Published: May 2025

Paperback Available May 2025, but pre-order your copy today!

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From blue-note turmoil to grace-note power, Black women preachers stand tall. In Colored Women Sittin' on High, Melanie R. Hill offers a new perspective on the art of the sermon in African American literature, music, and theology. Drawing on the womanist cadence of Alice Walker in literature and the rhythmical flow of named womanist theologians, Hill makes interventions at the intersections of African American literary criticism, music, and religious studies.

Pushing against the patriarchal dominance that often exists in religious spaces, Hill argues that Black women's religious practice creates a "sermonic space" that thrives inside and outside the church, allowing for a critique of sexism and anti-Black racism. She examines literature by writers such as Zora Neale Hurston and James Baldwin, music by Aretha Franklin and Ms. Lauryn Hill, and sermons by theologians Ruby Sales and Vashti M. McKenzie, and she takes readers into a sermonic artwork of artists, preachers, and freedom movement activists who are, as Hill contends, the greatest "virtuosic alchemists" of our time.

About the Author

Melanie R. Hill is 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.
For more information about Melanie R. Hill, visit the Author Page.