The Revelations of Asher

Book excerpt: The Revelations of Asher: Toward Supreme Love in Self is an endarkened, feminist, new literacies event. It critically and creatively explores Black women's terror in love. With poetry, prose, and analytic memos, Jeanine Staples shows how a group of Black women's talk and writings about relationships revealed epistemological and ontological revelations, after 9/11. These revelations are presented in the context of a third wave new literacies framework. They are voiced and storied dynamically by the women's seven fragmented selves. Through the selves, we learn the five ways the women lived as lovers: Main Chick, Side Chick, Bonnie, Bitch, and Victim. As an alternative-response to these identities in love, the author presents a new way. She introduces the Supreme Lover Identity and illuminates its integral connection to social and emotional justice for and through Black women's wisdom.