The Wounds Are the Witness

Summary

From celebrated scholar Dr. Yolanda Pierce comes this indelible meditation on Black faith, suffering, hope, andthe healing possibilities of justice, written in the venerable tradition of James Cone and Kelly Brown Douglas.What do we do with wounds—our own, others', and a nation's? We can turn away, avert our gaze. We canmake a spectacle of suffering. Or like the doubting disciple who longed to touch Jesus's side, we can acquaintourselves with the wounds: both the story they tell and the healing they prefigure.In The Wounds Are the Witness, Yolanda Pierce, dean of Vanderbilt University Divinity School and author ofIn My Grandmother's House, weaves together her own memories, vignettes from Black life, and scenes fromscripture, especially the passion of Christ. To work for liberation in a broken world, we cannot look away fromcrucified flesh. Bones from the Middle Passage, GI Bill benefits denied to Black veterans, women inmatesshackled while giving birth: we must take all such wounds seriously. They testify to both the pain and the faithof a people.With the lyrical eye of a poet and the moral precision of a preacher, Pierce casts readers into the astoundingstory of God's healing. From the curative powers of a spiderweb to the work of justice in history, politics,medicine, higher education, and the Black church, Pierce asks: Where are the remedies for the battered andbroken? What does accountability look like? Is there any cure?Healing takes time, Pierce writes, and even the wounds of the risen Christ do not immediately close. When thewounds become the witness, we find a faith reimagined and a hope transfigured. They tell the truth: about theextent of the injury and the extraordinary work of healing.