Although Henry Louis Gates examined the ways in which African slave language formed the metaphors for African American poetry and fiction in The Signifying Monkey, there have been no studies of the theological and ethical significance of the salutations of black Americans until now. In Dark Salutations, Riggins Earl examines black American's ethnocentric verbalized salutary expressions-"brotherman" and "sistergirl," for example-that dominate their ritualistic moments of social encounter.
The noticeable religious content of some of these salutations drives us to examine blacks'...
Although Henry Louis Gates examined the ways in which African slave language formed the metaphors for African American poetry and fiction in The Signi...
