Christena Cleveland

Winner of a 2013 Leadership Journal Book Award ("Our Very Short List" in "The Leader's Outer Life" category) 2014 Readers' Choice Awards Honorable Mention Despite Jesus' prayer that all Christians "be one," divisions have been epidemic in the body of Christ from the beginning to the present. We cluster in theological groups, gender groups, age groups, ethnic groups, educational and economic groups. We criticize freely those who disagree with us, don't look like us, don't act like us and don't even like what we like.

America in 2020 is at a crossroads. We are searching for home in places where belonging and identity are often contested. Editor Cinelle barnes takes this search to the South, a place haunted by a history of exclusion and discrimination. In A Measure of Belonging: Writers of Color on the New American South, twenty-one writers share powerful experiences of living, working, and writing during this complicated time.