When I Spoke in Tongues

September 1, 2018
From Maryland to Nigeria, a woman tries to make sense of her loss of faith.Wilbanks, a winner of the Pushcart Prize, grew up in an insular, working-class, Pentecostal home. Her sex education came from weekly mailings her parents received from Focus on the Family, and her pastor taught that signs of Jesus' return were everywhere. By the time Wilbanks reached adolescence, she was uncertain about her faith. On Nov. 5, 1995, she declared, to God and to a scrap of paper she then shoved in her pocket, "Jessica Wilbanks is no longer a Christian." That ritual reversal of the datable conversions so prized by evangelical Christians occurs about a quarter through the book; the rest of the memoir is devoted to the author's forging of a new life. She experimented with alcohol and drugs and attended Hampshire College and then the University of Houston, all the while trying to maintain relationships with her parents and brothers. While in graduate school, Wilbanks became interested in the extent to which Pentecostalism had roots in West Africa. She received a grant and traveled to Nigeria to "immerse myself in the faith I had left as a child" and study "the history of Pentecostal Christianity." After the trip, which included a near-fatal car wreck, she quit smoking, took up running, continued to try to maintain a good relationship with her family, got married, and had a child. The memoir ends with a lovely scene of Wilbanks, her son, and her mother attending a candlelit Christmas Eve service. However, the author never compellingly establishes the stakes of her trip to Africa, and her tendency to end chapters with lines that reach too hard for meaning--e.g., "those women's eyes rested on mine, and I felt forgiven"--eventually grows tiresome.Better read as an earnest account of an adult maintaining ties with her family of origin than as a story of life after religion.

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Starred review from September 24, 2018
Wilbanks, winner of a Pushcart Prize for essay writing, debuts with the captivating story of how she turned away from God. She eloquently explores her long journey from being a Pentecostal Christian who spoke in tongues to being an atheist. Wilbanks tells of her childhood growing up in a dilapidated farmhouse in Maryland where she would mark up her Precious Moments Bible with pink highlighter. Throughout college she slowly begins to recognize the “metallic coil of anxiety buried deep in my belly” that came from the questioning of her religious upbringing. As a graduate student, having rejected her childhood faith but curious to know its roots, Wilbanks researched the Pentecostal movement. She includes portraits of such people as William Seymour, a poor man living on Azusa Street in California, and wealthy Enoch Adeboye from Nigeria, who changed her thinking about Pentecostalism, which had become derisive after her conversion to atheism. As Wilbanks learned more about her childhood religion, she visited Africa and was appalled that clergy and laity punishes children as witches: “You had to look closely to see the scars.” Whether writing of these scars, her dad’s rusty pickup trucks, or massive Pentecostal revivals in Lagos, Wilbanks captures the scene beautifully. Wilbanks’s slow deconstruction of her family-given religiosity is an evocative inversion of the average spiritual journey.

December 1, 2018

Wilbanks (MFA, Univ. of Houston) investigates the metamorphosis of identity of both obtaining and losing her Christian faith. This divine gift of "prayer language" cemented Jessica's membership in her childhood Pentecostal church in rural Maryland. Her family shared a fervent belief that wasn't shaken until she acknowledged her own sexual identity; an orientation that wasn't allowed among her community. The loss of her own God led Wilbanks to explore a different Pentecostal church in Nigeria for her college thesis. But an anticipated recurrence of her prayer language never occurred. "Scholars of bereavement talk about the damage that results from the loss of the "assumptive world"--the internal framework we use to make sense of our experiences." It left a metaphysical hole that Wilbanks adapted to but never fully reconciled. VERDICT This debut memoir conveys a down-home feel with a literary voice. Its sophistication and nuance are countered by raw emotion. In addition to contributing to the historical documentation of life in a Pentecostal church, Wilbanks ultimately writes a deeply personal account of belief and nonbelief.--Jessica Bushore, Xenia, OH

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2018
Raised a devout Pentecostal, Wilbanks spoke in tongues for the first time when she was 11. Yet some four years later, she lost her faith. Life went on, nevertheless. Her parents discovered she was bisexual. She went off to college, where she was diagnosed as anorexic and sent to a residential treatment center. She graduated, went to work, had an unsuccessful affair with a man, and, feeling empty and dissatisfied, finally decided to go back to school. About that time, she also became fascinated with the history of Pentecostalism, and began to think it had its roots in Nigeria. To think was to act, and she secured a travel grant and headed to Africa in search of history and, perhaps, a renewal of her faith. Wilbanks has a fascinating story to tell, and she tells it well. Especially interesting is her report of her time in Nigeria, where Pentecostalism is hugely popular and potent. But is it viable? Wilbanks wonders, and so will readers like her who may be interested in learning about the roots of faith..(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)