She repeated her question again, this time with more urgency. I agreed, and then she hung up.
I grew up recognizing the power of women in my church. Pentecostalism is a “charismatic renewal” movement within Christianity that emphasizes a direct and personal relationship with God, and although men might have occupied more positions as preachers and reverends, women’s spiritual talents were more evident. For years, I had watched women prophesy to other women, men, the homeless, and drug addicts after peering down at them from the pulpit. I had seen women place their hands on people’s heads and watched those people, who were sometimes two or three times the size of those women, fall on the ground, speaking in tongues—a sacred language that is believed to be only comprehended by God—and waving their hands around before an usher covered them with a white cloth. Men, women, children, and infants would clamor to reach the front of the church, many crying, many shaking, a few falling over, all with their eyes closed. Speakers would also move in and out of the crowd, pinpoint someone, move towards that person, and prophesy to him or her. We called these women who had the gift of healing and prophesy, whether through touch, prayer, or anointing olive oil before giving it to someone in need, “prayer warriors.” Sometimes prayer warriors would form circles with other women whenever they needed God to make a move in a given situation. Other times, they would claim vivid dreams that foretold the future.
My grandmother Sylvana was a prayer warrior. Every morning, she would seclude herself in her closet and pray for all her loved ones. Plenty of times she would dream about fortune or misfortune portrayed through symbols, such as vines and birds. I wasn’t quite sure that Irie was a prophetess. She seemed too young, and she wasn’t trained in biblical doctrine. But her unwavering voice forced me to believe with all my might that something was coming to me on Wednesday at noon.
A few days passed, during which I was starting to warm up to the idea of attending the University of Miami. I liked Miami, loved it actually. I loved the palm trees and the beaches, and the carefree attitude that Miamians all seemed to have. I thought I could get used to an ibis as my school’s mascot. I even imagined myself holding up my hands like wings out of pride for my alma mater. And then I received a voice mail. I assumed that it was from my mother, telling me to take out the trash before I did anything else—she always left me messages like this—but I listened to it anyway. It wasn’t from her. It was from a woman at Princeton, who indicated that she had called me at noon. It was Wednesday.
Once I got home to my bedroom, I took a deep breath and called her back. I thought that I would have to go through an interview of some sort, some final fiery hoop to prove that I could do the work there, but when she answered the phone, she didn’t waste any time in telling me that I was accepted and that she would send an acceptance letter in a few days. I hung up the phone and started crying. When I called my mother, she screamed. Immediately, my house was infused with a fresh burst of happiness.
That same night, my mother drove me down to the church to give my testimony. I gave the testimony again at the following Sunday service, and Irie sat in the back, silently crying with her hands clasped near her face. I don’t know whether the congregation was captivated more by my story, or by the realization that the quiet single mother in the last pew was a prophetess. In retrospect, I realized that I needed that month in a holding pattern to really wait and see what God could do. Getting off Princeton’s waitlist demonstrated more of His glory because it seemed the most impossible outcome. Fourteen hundred names. Fourteen hundred names. There is no amount of math or science that can rationalize what had transpired. Irie had predicted the exact date and time that something great would happen to me, and it did. And this would not be the only time that Irie’s prophesies came true. During my commencement weekend, Irie texted me the words “bidding war” in relation to my writing dreams. She knew no publishing lingo, and only asked that I receive her message. Two years later, I did get into the midst of a bidding war; my proposal sold at auction, which is how this book came to be.
Enchantment, magic, and faith-based power have always been a pervasive force in African-American life. For slaves, accessing the supernatural was a way in which to undermine white domination and possess power in day-to-day conflicts. In his memoir, Frederick Douglass writes of a conjure man named Sandy Jenkins, a fellow slave who provides him with a root that will protect him if and when he finds himself in a confrontation with a “negro-breaker,” or slave disciplinarian. The black abolitionist and writer Henry Clay Bruce, who had been enslaved in Virginia, discovered a community of slaves who sought the help of a conjurer in order to thwart deportation and removal to a plantation in the Deep South, where conditions were presumably more brutal. At the last minute, their relocation was cancelled.4 Slaves moved from conjure to Christianity with little to no concern about the supposed incompatibility of these two belief systems.5 Slaves’ encounters with Christianity were deeply fraught—some had it foisted upon them, and others were actively barred from it. Indeed, white supremacy has been inextricably linked to Christianity in America. Some slave masters took up the task of converting their slaves so that they would remain obedient at all times. Many believed it was God’s will for Africans to be enslaved so that they would be brought closer to Christ. But masters tended to hate it when slaves actually made Christianity their own. Slaves were forbidden to have prayer meetings, so they met secretly in wood and ravines, among other places. Some masters forbid their slaves to go to church because they believed that they didn’t have souls. Despite all these adversities, including not being able to read the Bible for themselves, slaves crafted sermons, songs, and dances blended with ancestral African traditions and their present-day experiences.
The rise of Pentecostalism in the 1800s saw ritual healing and protection, as well as the notion of supernatural help, become more closely aligned with traditional Christian practice. Because black people in the United States lacked sufficient medical care, even after emancipation—if they were treated, it was often with contempt by white physicians—they turned to herbalists and conjurers for healing. Both Pentecostal prayer warriors and conjure specialists believed that the spiritual and natural worlds collided in their practice; they each relied on supernatural, invisible powers to restore the wholeness of an afflicted client, even today. For the former, God is the vehicle through which these miracles spring forth, whereas for the latter the source is more ambiguous. Some conjure specialists believe that their talents are divine, and others say that their powers derive from objects and charms that they have created.