247 p., Discusses the diasporic origins of Palo Mayombe, a Kongo-Cuban religious tradition, while seeking to analyze how it fulfills, in a new transplanted setting, the spiritual needs of a given segment of the Cuban immigrant population in the United States—designated here as the “strangers in a new land”—“serving not only as a healing mechanism but also a vehicle towards the preservation of ethnic and cultural identity.”
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.
"There is evidence that religion and spirituality affect psychosocial adjustment to cancer. However, little is known about the perceptions and meanings of religion and spirituality among Black and minority ethnic groups living with cancer in the UK. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 26 Black Caribbean and 19 White British patients living in South London boroughs with advanced cancer to explore how religion and spirituality influenced their self-reported cancer experience. Twenty-five Black Caribbean patients and 13/19 White British patients volunteered views on the place of religion or God in their life. Spirituality was rarely mentioned." (authors)
"The Spanish expression--la cultura cura (culture heals)--is an affirmation of the potential healing power of a variety of cultural practices that together constitute the ethos of a people"
164 p., Traces the journey of blacks from the Middle Passage through urban migration northward in black fiction. Argues that the historical use of religious rhetoric is transcended in black writing of the 20th century in order to recast black victimization during slavery, counter the progress of turn-of-the-century white supremacy, and chronicle the rise of economic racism which created the 20th century black ghetto. The religious doctrines discussed in this study include Puritan missionizing and heretical purges in I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem , the social work of the Catholic church in Contending Forces: A Romance Illustrative of Negro Life North and South , and the cultural intensity of the Pentecostal/Apostolic church in Go Tell It on the Mountain.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
432 p., Religion is one of the most important elements of Afro-Caribbean culture linking its people to their African past, from Haitian Vodou and Cuban Santeria—popular religions that have often been demonized in popular culture—to Rastafari in Jamaica and Orisha-Shango of Trinidad and Tobago. In Afro-Caribbean Religions, Nathaniel Samuel Murrell provides a comprehensive study that respectfully traces the social, historical, and political contexts of these religions.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
191 p., Comparing Cuban American and African American religiosity, this book argues that Afro-Cuban religiosity and culture are central to understanding the Cuban and Cuban American condition. It interprets this saturation of the Afro-Cuban as transcending race and affecting Cubans and Cuban Americans in spite of their pigmentation or self-identification.
