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Spirituality isn't just about what happens in your inner life—it's also about what happens in your connections to other people, the cultures that shape your experience of religion, and the long histories of how religion and culture intertwine.
Throughout Writing My Wrongs, Shaka has to sort through all of this in his experience of spirituality and religion. He grew up with Christianity, but a version of it filtered through white American culture in a way that he eventually found hard to connect to. In prison, he discovered Muslim groups with a spirituality more focused on African and African American heritage. Shaka found deep growth and community there.
Along the way, important people in his life shared their investment in spirituality, usually Christian or Islamic, as a motivation for caring about Shaka and supporting him.
Shaka values religion and spirituality, but he's also open to critiquing religious organizations.
Shaka felt a need to find a religious expression that valued Black culture.