Description
Drawing on a range of historical and literary texts, this book examines how Black women under the yoke of slavery negotiated their sense of belonging and spirituality from a liminal position, stuck between a new life in the Americas, and their connections to their African ancestral roots and a wider diasporic community.
The book investigates how Black women in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, the United States, and Brazil turned to their spiritual beliefs as a tool of resilience and resistance. These “griots” and “goddesses” are forced to negotiate complex issues such as race, gender, identity, maternity, sexuality, and belonging, from a liminal position that looks to both settle roots in a foreign land, and stay connected to ancestors and the Sacred. As these Black female protagonists turn to (re)memory and ancestral knowledge to map their connection with the Divine, they become mediators of worlds, and hybrid griots surpassing temporal and geographical boundaries.
With important reflections on Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa’s Daughters of the Stone, and Ana Maria Gonçalves’s Um Defeito de Cor, amongst other texts, this book will be of interest to advanced students and researchers of comparative literature, religious studies, gender studies, and African diaspora studies.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION
Origins and New Beginnings
Hybrid Cultures and Identities
CHAPTER 2 - EMBARKATIONS AND DISEMBARKATIONS: THE VOICES OF THE ORISHAS IN THE AMERICAS
Introduction
Embarkations: Traditional African Spirituality
Disembarkations: New World Syncretism
CHAPTER 3 - YEMANJA AND OSHUN: AFRICAN GODDESSES IN DIALOGUE WITH THE AMERICAS
Introduction
Um defeito de cor: Crossings and Manifestations
Daughters of the Stone: Oshun Speaks
CHAPTER 4 – MEMORY AND (RE)MEMORY IN WORKS OF BLACK WOMEN WRITERS
Introduction
Beloved: Haunting Memories and Painful Disremembering
Um defeito de cor: A Lifetime of (Re)Memories
Reyita: The Life of a Black Cuban Woman in the Twentieth Century and Bitita’s Diary: The Childhood Memoirs of Carolina Maria de Jesus: Memories of Identity
CHAPTER 5 – MAPPING THE DIVINE IN THE AFRICAN DIASPORA
Introduction
Crossings and Dislocations
Rootedness and Spirituality
Intertwined Root Theories
Negotiations of Diaspora: A Literary Selection
The Spirits Dance Mambo: A Double Diaspora
CHAPTER 6 – GODDESSES: MEDIUMS OF WORLDS
Introduction
Healing Practices: Women between Cities and Worlds
Um Defeito de Cor and Sortes de Villamor: Echoes of Spirits and Spiritual Healing
The Altar of My Soul and The Spirits Dance Mambo: Orishas, Patakís, and Identity
CHAPTER 7 - GRIOTS: GUARDIANS OF UNIVERSAL KNOWLEDGE
Introduction
Beloved and Daughters of the Stone: Embodied Inscriptions and the Passing On of "Herstories"
CHAPTER 8 – NEGOTIATING GENDER AND MATERNITY UNDER THE YOKE OF SLAVERY
Introduction
Maternity Sought and Maternity Denied: Beloved, Daughters of the Stone, and Um defeito de cor
CHAPTER 9 – MANIFESTATIONS OF SEXUALITY AND SPIRITUALITY: A LITERARY PERSPECTIVE
Introduction
Liminal Sexuality and Gender Ambiguity in The Red of His Shadow
CHAPTER 10 - CONCLUSIONS
The voices echo on
INDEX
