
Cover art of The Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America. Jacket design by Zak Tebbal, 2024.
A historical photo from the Detroit Free Press showing a Black family at a baptism ceremony, 1989. Photo by John Luke.
Black Priest, White Church by Lawrence Lucas, 1970.
A Separate Rite
Aaron Robertson is the author of The Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America and a literary translator from Italian.
Artist BioA Separate Rite delves into the intersections of religion and Black self-determination during a tumultuous period in American history. The novel unfolds against the backdrop of the Black Power movement and the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), which aimed to modernize Catholic Church practices.
The narrative centers on Father Leopold Garrett, an aging Black nationalist and pastor of a schismatic religious institution that broke off from the Catholic Church in the late 1960s, resulting in his excommunication. In 1989, as the Detroit Archdiocese plans to close over thirty parish churches and schools due to funding shortages and demographic shifts, Garrett leads a citywide protest movement. The story begins with a startling discovery that revives old wounds and sparks new opportunities for Garrett’s congregation: the incorruptible bodies of two children from his church, missing since the 1960s, are found preserved as though they were merely sleeping. Their bodies emit faint scents of rosewater and myrrh, reminiscent of ancient Christian saints, which raises profound spiritual questions and spurs a revolt against the shutdown of inner-city churches, mostly serving poor and Black communities.
The novel explores themes of faith, loss, revolution, spiritual conversion, and the tension between secular and sacred realms. It combines traditional archival research with oral histories, Black Catholic autobiographical writing, and medieval hagiographies. Garrett’s personal testimony provides the structural backbone, recounting the lives and purported miracles of the children, the so-called “myrrhoblytes,” while reclaiming a voice for Black believers within the broader tapestry of Catholic history. Ultimately, A Separate Rite presents a surreal and intimate portrait of a revolutionary church in decline, serving as a dramatic microcosm of Black Catholic history in the United States.

Aaron Robertson
Brooklyn, New York
Aaron Robertson is a writer, literary translator from Italian, and editor. His translation of Igiaba Scego’s novel Beyond Babylon was shortlisted for the 2020 PEN Translation Prize and National Translation Award, among other honors. In 2021, he received a National Endowment for the Arts grant for his translation of Giulia Caminito’s The Big A. Formerly a board member of the American Literary Translators Association, Aaron now serves as an advisory editor for The Paris Review. His debut book, The Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (US) and forthcoming from Chatto & Windus (UK) in February 2025, has received critical acclaim. Hailed by The Washington Post as an “extraordinary new work of history and memoir,” and by The New York Times as “original and compelling,” the book was also selected as a NYTBR Editors’ Choice and named a Best Book of Fall 2024 by The New Republic. Aaron has contributed to Violent Phenomena: 21 Essays on Translation and The Heart of a Stranger: An Anthology of Exile Literature. His articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, Foreign Policy, n+1, The Point, Literary Hub, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and other publications. His work has been supported by the Robert B. Silvers Foundation, the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society at Stanford University, and the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University. In 2024, Aaron also served as a judge for the International Booker Prize.