Sinners - A Reading and Resource List
Welcome to the syllabus for Sinners, Ryan Coogler's magnum opus that we can’t stop thinking about.
Welcome to the syllabus for Sinners, Ryan Coogler’s magnum opus that we can’t stop thinking about. Set in the Mississippi Delta in 1932, Sinners is part vampire horror thriller, part Southern history, and a moving tribute to the people who gave us the Blues as a way to witness, understand, and process the pain of the United States.
I curated this reading and resource list as your companion to the world Coogler conjured on screen. Starting in 2016, I spent time in the Mississippi Delta working at the Delta Center for Culture and Learning, helping out with a National Endowment for the Humanities workshop that trained K-12 educators to teach their students about Blues history and Civil Rights history. The Delta transformed me and continues to capture a corner of my heart. I try to visit often. I knew walking out of the theatre after watching Sinners that I wanted to make a public offering through Reviewing the Record.
You’re in the right place if you want to dive into the roots of Blues music with Amiri Baraka, travel with Zora Neale Hurston to gather Voodoo stories and traditions, revisit the Black Freedom Struggle in Mississippi that contributed to the end of American apartheid, cross the Atlantic Ocean with Saidiya Hartman to reflect on Black Americans’ connection to the African continent, or learn more about the history of racial formation in the US.
Please enjoy and feel free to reach out with additional suggestions.
*My gratitude to Cyan Blackwell, Gino Nuzzolillo, Keiana West, Michaela Clarke, and Wayne Dowdy for assistance in curating the list.*
BLUES MUSIC AND THE JOOK JOINT
Blues People: Black Music in White America by Amiri Baraka
Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson By Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow
Segregating Sound: Inventing Folk and Pop Music in the Age of Jim Crow by Karl Hagstrom Miller
Is Blues the Mother of All Modern Music? by Sound Field PBS (Youtube)
“From Chain Gangs To Pop Soul, The Legacy of Enslaved African Americans Is Beyond Measure” by Meryana and RadioSparx
Po' Monkey's: Portrait of a Juke Joint by Will Jacks (A compelling photography project)
Jookin’: The Rise of Social Dance Formation in African-American Culture by Katrina Hazzard-Donald
THE MISSISSIPPI DELTA
I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle by Charles Payne (In my view, one of the best books on the civil rights movement that offers enduring lessons on effective community organizing)
Until I am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer’s Enduring Message to America by Keisha Blain
Food Power Politics: The Food Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement by Bobby J. Smith II
The Most Southern Place on Earth: the Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity by James Cobb
Cotton and Race in the Making of America: the Human Costs of Economic Power by Gene Dattel
The Blood of Emmett Till by Timothy B. Tyson
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson (A modern classic.)
BLACK RELIGION - HOODOO AND CHRISTIANITY
Mules and Men by Zora Neale Hurston
Black Magic: Religions and the African American Conjuring Tradition by Yvonne Chireau
Slave Religion: The Invisible Institution in the Antebellum South by Albert J. Raboteau
Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw (A delicious story collection)
A Dictionary and Catalog of African American Folklife of the South by Sherman E. Pyatt and Alan B Johns
The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This is Our Song by Henry Louis Gates Jr. (4-part PBS docuseries with a companion book)
RACE, IDENTITY, AND HISTORY
“Lessons From Black and Chinese Relations in the Deep South” by Imani Perry
Honor and Duty: the Mississippi Delta Chinese (Documentary series)
How the Irish Became White by Noel Ignatiev
Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890-1940 by Grace Elizabeth Hale
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett (This novel explores the concept of racial “passing”)
The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians: Tribal History
In The Wake: On Blackness and Being by Christina Sharpe
Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route by Saidiya Hartman
Black Reconstruction: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880 by WEB DuBois
Reconstruction in America: Racial Violence after the Civil War, 1865-1876 by Equal Justice Initiative
Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon
OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS
“In 'Sinners,' the Deaths Feel Like a Metaphor” by Brooke Obie (excellent film review)
“The Griot tradition of West Africa” by Sibo Bangoura (TEDxSydney musical performance and talk)
Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon
River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom by Walter Johnson
South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation by Imani Perry
The Vampire: A New History by Nick Groom
Wunmi Mosaku as Annie in Sinners. Photo from Warner Bros. Pictures. 
Miles Caton as Sammy in Sinners. Photo from Warner Bros. Pictures.
You’re a star for doing this!!
When will we get another Deesha Philyaw story collection?? In the meantime, she's on substack: @deeshaphilyaw