Table of Contents

American Lazarus: An Introduction
Chapter 1: Race, Religion, and Regeneration
Chapter 2: Samson Occom and the Poetics of Native Revival
Chapter 3: John Marrant and the Lazarus Theology of the Early Black Atlantic
Chapter 4: Prince Hall Freemasonry: Secrecy, Authority, and Culture
Chapter 5: Black Identity and Yellow Fever in Philadelphia
Conclusion: Lazarus Lives
Appendix 1: Samson Occom's Collection of Divine Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1774)
Appendix 2: Author-Unknown Hymns Original to Occom's Collection
Appendix 3: Original Hymns by Samson Occom
Notes
Bibliography

About the Author

Joanna Brooks is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University

Reviews

"In American Lazarus Joanna Brooks applies a new and highly effective paradigm to the emergence of African American and Native American voices in eighteenth-century British America. As she explores the confluence of evangelical religion and revolutionary ideology that gave rise to such writes as Samson Occom, John Marrant, and Prince Hall, Brooks reinvigorates a long tradition of American Studies scholarship. Well-written and learned, American
Lazarus should find a wide audience." --Philip F. Gura, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
"IAmerican Lazarus is a stunning resurrection of a buried chapter of American literary history and the redemption of a host of misread, ignored, and undervalued African American and Native American literary artists whose works have long awaited the interpretive powers and methods of Joanna Brooks. This book transforms our reading of American religion, race, history, and literature by reformulating our assumptions about the literary culture of the early
Republic. Brooks demonstrates how black and Indian authors used the dominant religion and language to construct the terms and reality of their own survival, redemption, and regeneration. Brooks's revealing,
heroic narrative will change how we think about the formation of the nation." --Emory Elliott, University of California, Riverside
"Offers...accounts of fascinating moments in American cultural history that remind us of the involvement of people of color in the creation of our religious heritage. Brooks succeeds in celebrating the heroic struggles and bold texts of eighteenth-century African Americans and Christianized Native Americans as they critiqued the dominant culuture and sustained their own communities." --Christianity & Literature
"American Lazarus launches an important and powerful refiguring of early American literature--a refiguring made possible by contemporary theories of race and colonization, but one governed nevertheless by Brooks's insistence on reading African American and Native American writers of the eighteenth century with rigorous attention to the religious and political contexts that produced them." --Eric J. Sundquist, University of California, Los Angeles
"American Lazarus is a model of imaginative and rigorous interdisciplinary research." --Early American Literature
"A groundbreaking and illuminating book.... Brooks's originality, clarity, and scholarship in American Lazarus are noteworthy. The textual analyses are thorough and meticulous."--The North Star
"Brook's erudite and detailed analysis of the historical context makes American Lazarus an excellent work for students in the social sciences and humanities, as well as for anyone interested in furthering their understanding of the malleability of racial and ethnic identity."--Journal of African American History
"Brook's erudite and detailed analysis of the historical context makes American Lazarus an excellent work for students in the social sciences and humanities, as well as for anyone interested in furthering their understanding of the malleability of racial and ethnic identity."--Journal of African American History
"A groundbreaking and illuminating book.... Brooks's originality, clarity, and scholarship in American Lazarus are noteworthy. The textual analyses are thorough and meticulous."--The North Star
"American Lazarus is a model of imaginative and rigorous interdisciplinary research." --Early American Literature
"American Lazarus launches an important and powerful refiguring of early American literature--a refiguring made possible by contemporary theories of race and colonization, but one governed nevertheless by Brooks's insistence on reading African American and Native American writers of the eighteenth century with rigorous attention to the religious and political contexts that produced them." --Eric J. Sundquist, University of California, Los Angeles
"Offers...accounts of fascinating moments in American cultural history that remind us of the involvement of people of color in the creation of our religious heritage. Brooks succeeds in celebrating the heroic struggles and bold texts of eighteenth-century African Americans and Christianized Native Americans as they critiqued the dominant culuture and sustained their own communities." --Christianity & Literature
"IAmerican Lazarus is a stunning resurrection of a buried chapter of American literary history and the redemption of a host of misread, ignored, and undervalued African American and Native American literary artists whose works have long awaited the interpretive powers and methods of Joanna Brooks. This book transforms our reading of American religion, race, history, and literature by reformulating our assumptions about the literary culture of the early
Republic. Brooks demonstrates how black and Indian authors used the dominant religion and language to construct the terms and reality of their own survival, redemption, and regeneration. Brooks's revealing,
heroic narrative will change how we think about the formation of the nation." --Emory Elliott, University of California, Riverside
"In American Lazarus Joanna Brooks applies a new and highly effective paradigm to the emergence of African American and Native American voices in eighteenth-century British America. As she explores the confluence of evangelical religion and revolutionary ideology that gave rise to such writes as Samson Occom, John Marrant, and Prince Hall, Brooks reinvigorates a long tradition of American Studies scholarship. Well-written and learned, American
Lazarus should find a wide audience." --Philip F. Gura, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill