The Black Madonna: Icon of Resistance and Nourisher of Souls

The Black Madonna is an uncommon, dark-skinned version of the Virgin Mary whose 450+ shrines cover the globe—from Cuba to South Africa, from the Philippines to Poland, from Haiti to France, from Rwanda to Switzerland, from London to Harlem. Though Black Madonna pilgrimage sites draw tens of millions of seekers of all religions and spiritualities each year, most people have never heard of the Black Madonna. Even fewer have experienced her as the holy insurrectionist who has sparked world-changing rebellions, such as South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement and the Haitian Revolution, and galvanized iconic revolutionaries, such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu and bell hooks.

In The Black Madonna: Icon of Resistance and Nourisher of Souls (Hay House, LLC, July 7, 2026), Christena Cleveland takes the reader on a global journey to explore rarely publicized, heartwarming, empowering, and often hilarious stories about the Black Madonna that reveal her as a unifying figure of refuge, resistance, and renewal who consistently sides with and emancipates the oppressed, the silenced, the enslaved, the cast out, and the disempowered. These stories—recounted in vivid, practically cinematic detail—unshackle the Black Madonna from the limiting image of the “meek and mild virgin,” and reveal her as the ancient, primordial Dark Mother who “has loved us since the beginning of time,” “soothes our deepest wounds,” “sparks our liberation,” and “mothers us into abundance,” especially in chaotic times like we find ourselves in today. When we are exhausted and burned out, the Black Madonna invites us to surrender to her protective embrace and be revitalized by her subversive life force. When disillusionment takes hold, the Black Madonna offers radical belonging—urging us to reclaim our own sacred power.

Cleveland takes care to guide readers beyond knowing things about the Black Madonna and into the realm of experience with the Black Madonna. Offering intimate invocations and empowering rituals alongside each chapter, readers are invited to personally reclaim the Black Madonna as an icon of resistance and nourisher of souls. Those in desperate need of protection are introduced to Our Lady of Good Deliverance, whom Cleveland nicknames “Our Lady of F Around and Find Out.” Readers who are under-mothered and over-burdened are invited to relinquish their baggage and receive care at the altar of Our Lady of the Underworld, whom Cleveland calls “She Who Holds It All So We Don’t Have To.” All who are marginalized or stand in solidarity with the marginalized are transported to the Philippines where they can walk in the rice fields alongside Our Lady of Visitation, whom Cleveland dubs “The Mother of Us All Who Leaves Absolutely No One Behind.”

In The Black Madonna, Christena Cleveland expertly blends personal experiences, global stories, and historical records to reveal the cunning colonial forces that poison our social and spiritual landscape, while illuminating the Black Madonna as a Divine Ancestor and an endless source of spiritual nourishment, liberation, and protection. This book is a call to mystic-activism—for all of us who are alert to injustice and fervently devoted to co-creating a world of love.