Faith Fictions: “The Word Between this World and God”¹

¹ Title of a poem by Emily Warn, in This Art: Poems about Poetry, edited by Michael Wiegers (Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press, 2003), 131.

Abstract

The search for religious truth and depth in “fiction” invites a conceptualization of life and fictional narratives as faith fictions—narrative accounts of human experiences and the human condition that bridge this world and God. This article juxtaposes Mother Crocodile, Hunger, and Lost in Translation to highlight the ways in which they, not unlike the faith fictions of our sacred texts, “open before us … possible world[s] that may serve to refigure our own.” All this for a chance to imagine the theological and pedagogical implications of those two words so central to the Christian faith narrative: “Remember me.”

Mai-Anh Le Tran is assistant professor of Christian Education at Eden Theological Seminary. E-mail: [email protected]

Notes

² “Storyteller, singer, and genealogist.”

³ “Pentimento is the phenomenon of an earlier painting showing through a layer or layers of paint on a canvas.” Archie Smith, Jr. and Ursula Riedel-Pfaefflin, Siblings by Choice: Race, Gender, and Violence (St. Louis, Mo.: Chalice Press, 2004), 55.

¹ Title of a poem by Emily Warn, in This Art: Poems about Poetry, edited by Michael Wiegers (Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press, 2003), 131.