About this item
A memoir of growing up with blind, African-American parents in a segregated cult preaching the imminent end of the world When "The World in Flames" begins, in 1970, Jerry Walker is six years old. His consciousness revolves around being a member of a church whose beliefs he finds not only confusing but terrifying. Composed of a hodgepodge of requirements and restrictions (including a prohibition against doctors and hospitals) , the underpinning tenet of Herbert W. Armstrong s Worldwide Church of God was that its members were divinely chosen and all others would soon perish in rivers of flames. The substantial membership was ruled by fear, intimidation, and threats. Anyone who dared leave the church would endure hardship for the remainder of this life and eternal suffering in the next.
About the Author
Jerald Walker is a professor of creative writing at Emerson College. His writing has appeared in publications such as the Harvard Review, Mother Jones, the Iowa Review; the Missouri Review; the Oxford American; the Chronicle of Higher Education, and Creative Nonfiction, as well as four times in Best American Essays. He is the author of Street Shadows: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion, and Redemption, which won the PEN New England/L. L. Winship Award for Nonfiction.Author photo: Brenda Molife
