As our country finds itself in the throes of contentious debates over public memorials, Katie Walker Grimes presents a critical assessment of the hagiography of three Catholic figures sainted for their proximity to slavery in the Americas: Peter Claver, Martin de Porres, and the venerable Pierre Touissant. She does so with an eye for the ways in which our hagiographical interpretations of these men—one European, one of mixed race, and one an African Haitian—reveal what she calls the church's participation in both the “social death” of slavery and its ongoing “afterlife” in the Americas. Grimes’ stated purpose is not to assign blame, but rather to name dynamics that continue to limit the church's understanding of itself, which in turn limit its ability to respond to the racialized signs of our times.

She introduces three distinct concepts by which we can reinterpret our hagiographies of saints with proximity to Africanized slavery: antiblackness supremacy, which she intends as a disruptive idea that creates dissonance in the symmetrical logic whites often use in analyzing racism; “racial triumphalism,” by which the church understands itself as supreme liberator of enslaved people while simultaneously denying participation in their enslavement; and “fugitivity,” or the dispositions and actions of people who refuse to remain in place. The book is clearly organized into nine concise chapters, each with subheadings that assist the reader in following Grimes’ nuanced and thoroughly supported claims about the significance of hagiography where racism is concerned, as well as dimensions of each of these three figures that reveal antiblackness supremacy as the primary lens through which the church understands itself and through which it has developed racialized habits that sustain the afterlife of slavery. Grimes peels back the glossed layers of hagiographical interpretation of her subjects: situating these men in the historical context of the distinct slavocracies in which they lived, unveiling the dynamics of racism during their respective canonization processes, and naming the racialized ideas that shaped primary hagiographies reviewed by the popes, as well as subsequent hagiographical treatments that used these figures toward the ends of racial justice, whether by members of their respective religious orders or by US cardinals in homilies and addresses.

In all three, Grimes’ point is not that these figures were flawed; most saints were. Rather, she calls our attention to the ways in which they were flawed in terms of their specific relationship to slavery, which in turn makes clear the church's participation in it. She reminds us that in failing to remember these flaws, especially when those impacted by them would not be able to forget them, we ensure that the church will continue to participate in—and contribute to—the afterlife of slavery.

This is not just a critically deconstructive endeavor, but also a creatively reconstructive one, which can help Catholics in wrestling with interpretations of holiness in our own tradition as well as with the debates about America's secular saints. Grimes offers suggestions for how to better remember our past and the people in it with a method of hagiography of fugitivity that does not recapture these figures but allows their disruptive witness to make antiblackness supremacy more evident to all of us. She also points us to who to better remember: not more white heroes but rather those holy fugitives who either remained in the church or even fled its confines to join more life-giving justice movements.

Grimes implicitly connects Catholic systematic theology and interdisciplinary work in critical race theory. This is also a work in ethics, given her explanation of the significance of the communion of saints, and how our remembering them impacts our understanding of how racialized notions of virtues such as kindness, humility, charity, and peace can work to sustain an ongoing social death peoples of color face in the afterlife of slavery. This is not an introductory text in Catholicism and racism, and would require some scaffolding for those looking to use it in a classroom or in a parish setting. But that scaffolding is worth building, as the epiphanies Grimes offers can evoke the dispositions we need to make the Catholic tradition become “woke” in these critical times.