African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
369 p., This title includes discussions of Ernest Hemingway's life and works. Includes Philip Melling's "Cultural imperialism, Afro-Cuban religion, and Santiago's failure in Hemingway's The old man and the sea."
An exploration into the social networks of the Anglo-Caribbean African population from the mid 18th to early 19th centuries. Details are given describing the unique identity and culture of an international Black Protestant community established during the period. The transition from White evangelism of slaves to the self-sustained and promoted religious community of the African population is noted. Individual leaders such as William Hammet, William Meredith, and Denmark Vesey are also profiled.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
330 p., Explores the impact of the great Orishas (Yoruba: "deities") of the crossroads, Eshu-Elegguá , on the thriving literary and visual arts of the African diaspora. Eshu-Elegguá are multiple figures who work between physical and spiritual realms, open possibilities, and embody unpredictability and chance. Analyzes the texts Mumbo Jumbo (Ismael Reed, 1972), Sortilégio: Mistério Negro (Abdias do Nasicmento, 1951), Chago de Guisa (Gerardo Fulleda León, 1988), Brown Girl in the Ring (Nalo Hopkinson, 1998), Midnight Robber (Nalo Hopkinson, 2000), and Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys, 1966). The objective is to explore the aesthetic codes and philosophies that the figures of Eshu-Elegguá carry into the texts; trace their voices across multiple forms of cultural expression; and navigate the dialogues that these intermediary figures open between a group of literary texts that have not yet been studied together.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
201 p, Contents: Cultural history and the arts -- Festivals and Carnival -- Music of the French-speaking Caribbean and its diaspora. General works; Canada; Cuba; Dominica; Dominican Republic; France; French Guiana (Guyane); Guadeloupe; Haiti; Martinique; Puerto Rico; St. Lucia; United States -- Biographical and critical studies.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
262 p, The volume sheds particular light on the role of religious agency in African American and Caribbean social transformations (such as post-Civil-War laws and the lunch-counter struggles of the 1960s) and religious practices (such as folk healing, church women's roles in turn-of-the-century New Orleans, religious music). But the volume also offers new, ethnically influenced theological perspectives: specific contributions to Carribean, Cuban, womanist theologies and explorations of sacramental theology, ecotheology, and spirituality. Includes "The Garifuna dugu ritual in Belize: a celebration of relationships" by Barbara Flores.
109 p., Examines the local and global tensions which challenge inculturation in Jamaica, including the role African-derived religions play in that context. The history of Christianity in Jamaica, the development of the Roman Catholic Church's teachings with regards to culture, globalization and its impact on the local Church, and the appropriate method for doing inculturation in the Jamaica in an increasingly global context are examined.
Just as dance forms originating from Saint-Domingue made their way into southern culture, religion also left its indelible marks. It is well documented that the Vodou religion in New Orleans began to blossom around 1800 with Sanite Dede, a free woman of color who arrived from Saint-Domingue. The Saint-Domingan Vodou priestess was replaced in 1820 by New Orleans's native Marie Laveau, who became legendary. Haitians were for the most part Catholic; their presence in the various U.S. cities where they settled gave rise to the establishment of a number of biracial congregations. In Baltimore, in 1829, four colored Saint-Domingan women--Elizabeth Lange, Marie Magdelene Baas, Marie Rose Boegue, and Marie Therese Duchemin--established the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the world's first Black religious community, and founded the School for Colored Girls.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
251 p., Explores how Juan Francisco Manzano and Gabriel de la Concepcion Valdés (also known as Plácido) appropriated Hispanic literature to inscribe an African descendant subjectivity in 19th century proto-nationalist Cuban discourse. Revises Mary Louise Pratt's notion of "intercultural texts" and Angel Rama's "literary transculturation", proposing "transculturated colonial literature" to trace the contradictions, re-significations, silences and shifts in the aesthetic and ideological function of Manzano and Plácido's texts. As such, 19th century Afro-Cuban literature is analyzed as an active space of negotiation and exchange disputing racial and religious hierarchies to inscribe an Afro-Cuban religio-cultural subject. The author concludes that both Manzano and Plácido disrupted the aesthetic and ideological norms of the colonial status quo by producing the first instance of literary transculturation in Cuba.
An essay is presented which discusses the religious history and identity of the Caribbean Area and Africa from the Haitian Revolution through the 2010s, with a particular focus on Islam and voodooism. African and Caribbean identities, including the role that cosmopolitanism plays in identity formation, are discussed. An overview of the religious identity of the Muslim Haitian Revolution leader Dutty Boukman is provided.
