African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
309 p, Using the stories of ordinary people, Block illustrates how engaging with the powerful rhetoric and rituals of Christianity was central to survival. Isobel Criolla was a runaway slave in Cartagena who successfully lobbied the Spanish governor not to return her to an abusive mistress. Nicolas Burundel was a French Calvinist who served as henchman to the Spanish governor of Jamaica before his arrest by the Inquisition for heresy. Henry Whistler was an English sailor sent to the Caribbean under Oliver Cromwell's plan for holy war against Catholic Spain. Yaff and Nell were slaves who served a Quaker plantation owner, Lewis Morris, in Barbados. Seen from their on-the-ground perspective, the development of modern capitalism, race, and Christianity emerges as a story of negotiation, contingency, humanity, and the quest for community.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
216 p, A history of the Black Church as it developed both in the United States and the Caribbean after the arrival of enslaved Africans. Examines the parallel histories of these two strands of the Black Church, showing where their historical ties remain strong and where different circumstances have led them down unexpectedly divergent paths.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
267 p., Draws on in-depth interviews to reveal the personal experiences of those who adopted the religion in the 1950s to 1970s, one generation past the movement's emergence . By talking with these Rastafari elders, he seeks to understand why and how Jamaicans became Rastafari in spite of rampant discrimination, and what sustains them in their faith and identity.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
3 pp., Argues that religion in the Caribbean and Latin America embody "gender ideology," the dialectical contradictions expressed in moments of patriarchal dominance and feminism and women’s liberation. These influence and guide the action of a particular class or social group in its own interest.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
182 p., Explores the dialogue between two central institutions in African Caribbean life: the church and the dancehall. Beckford highlights how Dub – one of the central features of dancehall culture – can be mobilized as a framework for re-evaluating theology, taking apart doctrine and reconstructing it under the influence of a guiding theme.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
189 p., This volume provides a basic introduction to the study of religion and theology in the Latino/a, Black, and Latin American contexts. Chapters include Latin American liberation theology -- Black liberation theology -- Latino/a theology: to liberate or not to liberate? -- African diaspora religion.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
Originally published in Portuguese in Campinas by Editora da Unicamp as A formação do Candomblé: História e ritual da nação jeje na Bahia, 2006., 398 p., Interweaving three centuries of transatlantic religious and social history with historical and present-day ethnography, Luis Nicolau Pares traces the formation of Candomble, one of the most influential African-derived religious forms in the African diaspora, with practitioners today centered in Brazil but also living in Europe and elsewhere in the Americas.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
275 p., Explores the complicated post-colonial infrastructure of Caribbean society and life as an African American through the work of Erna Brodber. Brodber's novels "Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home," "MYAL," and "Louisiana" all explore various facets of the Caribbean and African American experiences. The author traces nuances of the Caribbean psyche, the importance of matriarchs, traditional slave dances, obeahs, Santeria and other African-based religious expressions, as well as politics and history.
