85 p., This thesis examines the practice of Obeah--an Afro-Caribbean system of healing, harming, and divination through the use of spiritual powers--within two slave communities in Berbice and Demerara (British Guiana). This study is based primarily on legal documents--including testimony from more than a dozen slaves--generated during the criminal trials of two men accused of practicing Obeah in 1819 and 1821-22. In contrast to most previous studies of Obeah, which have been based largely on descriptions provided by British observers, this project takes advantage of this complex, overlapping body of evidence to explore the social dynamics of Obeah as experienced by enslaved men and women themselves, including Obeah practitioners, their clients, and other witnesses. This study reveals that Obeah rituals could be extremely violent, that Obeah practitioners were feared as well as respected among their contemporaries, that the authority of Obeah practitioners was based on demonstrable success, and that slave communities in general were complex social worlds characterized by conflict and division as well as by support and unity--conclusions that combine to produce a fresh, humane vision of Afro-diasporan culture and community under slavery.
211 p., Explores the similarities and differences which characterize the depiction of people of color in certain representative 19th century Cuban and Brazilian slavery novels as a function of the authorial approach of each territory's literary tradition toward the issues of slavery, racial prejudice, and people of color. The selected texts, derived from the peak periods in slavery literature of each territory, include Francisco , by Anselmo Snárez y Romero; Sab , by Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda; Cecilia Valdés , by Cirilo Villaverde; A escrava Isaura , by Bernardo Guimarães; O mulato , by Aluísio Azevedo; and Bom-Crioulo , by Adolfo Caminha. While the present study explores the enslavement, abuse, and discrimination of people of color as a consequence of a deep-seated discourse of power, privilege and racial superiority, it focuses more extensively on the representation of people of color, particularly in their capacity to constructively appropriate the cultural values of the white dominant group and recognize their identity as ambiguous.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
Originally presented as the author's thesis (master's)--Programa de Pós-Graduação em História da Faculdade de Ciências e Letras da Universidade Estadual Paulista, 1998., 204 p.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
292 p., Definitive information on the identity and status of the emancipados who were a special group of Africans in Brazil, Cuba and Latin America. The author establishes that the peculiar nature of the introduction of the emacipados into Brazil and America made them free Africans, both de jure and de facto, thereby setting them apart from freed Africans or slaves in Brazilian and Cuban societies. Emancipados held a much better status within these societies.
Vieira,Vinícius Guilherme Rodrigues (Editor) and Johnson,Jacquelyn (Editor)
Format:
Book, Edited
Publication Date:
2009
Published:
Sao Paulo: FEAUSP
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
406 p., Includes Luciana da Cruz Brito's "South Atlantic "freedom" : the American media's view of Brazil's abolition of slavery process," Flávio Thales Ribeiro Francisco's "Black Aurora : Afro-Paulistas and Afro-Americans in modernity," Jacquelyn Johnson's "Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic : an incomplete paradigm," Túlio Custódio's "Roads and paths : the intellectual trajectory of Abdias do Nascimento during his exile in the United States (1968-1981)," Sarah Birdwell's "Double discrimination in a racial democracy : struggles of Black feminists in Brazil," Jackeline Romio's "The murder of black women in the city of São Paulo in 1998," Sarah Birdwell's "Negation and misrepresentation : "Black TV" in the United States and Brazil," etc.
