From celebrated scholar Dr. Yolanda Pierce comes this indelible meditation on Black faith, suffering, hope, and
the 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 can
make a spectacle of suffering. Or like the doubting disciple who longed to touch Jesus's side, we can acquaint
ourselves 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 of
In My Grandmother's House, weaves together her own memories, vignettes from Black life, and scenes from
scripture, especially the passion of Christ. To work for liberation in a broken world, we cannot look away from
crucified flesh. Bones from the Middle Passage, GI Bill benefits denied to Black veterans, women inmates
shackled while giving birth: we must take all such wounds seriously. They testify to both the pain and the faith
of a people.
With the lyrical eye of a poet and the moral precision of a preacher, Pierce casts readers into the astounding
story 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 and
broken? 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 the
wounds become the witness, we find a faith reimagined and a hope transfigured. They tell the truth: about the
extent of the injury and the extraordinary work of healing.
