The People Could Fly: Black Religion, Spirituality and Liberation

The title story from Virginia Hamilton’s 1986 collection of folktales, The People Could Fly, explores the legend of the flying Africans. These supernatural figures, who have appeared in narratives across the dispersion of people whose homeland is Africa or the diaspora, are often understood as a reflection of a longing to return “home.” In these instances, home can be many places: ancestral lands, the afterlife, or some fictional space associated with the possibility of freedom. In some contexts, the flying African is seen as a spiritual or religious icon, while in others they find ways to fig