The Bible offered a language-world through which African Americans have negotiated the strange land into which they were thrust. Vincent Wimbush outlines six African American readings that correspond to history and how they helped shape a collective self-understanding. When their voices were taken away, the Bible offered a way to speak again.

Vincent L. Wimbush is a transdisciplinary scholar of scriptures, former president of the Society for Biblical Literature, and the founding director of The Institute for Signifying Scriptures. He is the author or editor of more than twelve books, including Black Flesh Matters: Essays on Runagate Interpretation (2022), White Men's Magic: Scripturalization as Slavery (2012), MisReading America: Scriptures and Difference (2013), and Theorizing Scriptures: New Critical Orientations to a Cultural Phenomenon (2008).