Misreading America ― Scriptures and Difference

MisReading America presents original research on and conversation about reading formations in American communities of color, using the phenomenon of the reading of scriptures--''scripturalizing''--as an analytical wedge. Scriptures here are understood as shorthand for complex social phenomena, practices, and dynamics. The authors take up scripturalizing as a window onto the self-understandings, politics, practices, and orientations of marginalized communities. These communities have in common the context that is the United States, with the challenges it holds for all regarding: pressure to conform to conventional-canonical forms of communication, representation, and embodiment (mimicry); opportunities to speak back to and confront and overturn conventionality (interruptions); and the need to experience ongoing meaningful and complex relationships (reorientation) to the centering politics, practices, and myths that define ''America.''

Vincent L. Wimbush is Professor of Religion and Director of the Institute for Signifying Scriptures at Claremont Graduate University.