Katie Cannon's students referred to her work as "Katie's canon." Not only does this book represent Cannon's best work; it directly addresses canon formation and canon reformation. Cannon canonizes a literary tradition and directly addresses both oppression and liberation of African American women. Now in an expanded 25th-anniversary edition.

Katie Geneva Cannon (1950-2018) was the Annie Scales Rogers Professor of Christian Ethics at Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond, Virginia (2001-2018). She was the first African American woman ordained in the United Presbyterian Church (USA) and was the pioneer of womanist theology and ethics. Among her many books are God's Fierce Whimsy: The Implications of Feminism for Theological Education (1985), Womanist Theological Ethics: A Reader (2011), and The Oxford Handbook of African American Theology (2014).