Since its original publication in Portuguese in 2008, this first English translation of Divining Slavery has been extensively revised and updated, complete with new primary sources and a new bibliography. It tells the story of Domingos Sodre, an African-born priest who was enslaved in Bahia, Brazil in the nineteenth century. After obtaining his freedom, Sodre became a slave owner himself, and in 1862 was arrested on suspicion of receiving stolen goods from slaves in exchange for supposed 'witchcraft'. Using this incident as a catalyst, the book discusses African religion and its place in a slave society, analyzing its double role as a refuge for blacks as well as a bridge between classes and ethnic groups (such as whites who attended African rituals and sought help from African diviners and medicine men). Ultimately, Divining Slavery explores the fluidity and relativity of conditions such as slavery and freedom, African and local religions, personal and collective experience and identities in the lives of Africans in the Brazilian diaspora.

Winner of the Casa de las America Prize for Brazilian Literature, The Story of Rufino reconstructs the lively biography of Rufino Jose Maria, set against the historical context of Brazil and Africa in the nineteenth century. The book tells the story of Rufino or Abuncare, a Yoruba Muslim from the kingdom of Oyo, in present-day Nigeria. Enslaved as an adolescent by a rival ethnic group, he was captured by Brazilian slave traders and taken to Brazil as a slave sometime in the early 1820s. In 1835, after being enslaved in Salvador and Rio Grande do Sul, Rufino bought his freedom with money he made as a hired-out slave and perhaps from making Islamic amulets. He found work in Rio de Janeiro as a cook on a slave ship bound for Luanda in Angola, despite the trans-Atlantic slave trade having been illegal in Brazil since 1831. Rufino himself became a petty slave trader. He made a few voyages before his ship was captured by the British and taken to Sierra Leone in 1841 for trial by the Anglo-Brazilian Mixed Commission to determine if it was equipped for the slave trade, since there were no slaves on board. During the three months awaiting the court's decision, Rufino lived among Yoruba Muslims, his people, and attended Quranic and Arabic classes. He later returned to Sierra Leone as a witness in a court case and attended classes with Muslim masters for almost two years. Once back in Brazil, he established himself as a diviner - serving whites and blacks, free and slaves, Brazilians and Africans, Muslim and non-Muslims - as well as a spiritual leader, an Alufa, in the local Afro-Muslim community. In 1853 Rufino was arrested due to rumors of an imminent African slave revolt. The police used as evidence for his arrest the large number of Arabic manuscripts in his possession, the same kind of material the police had found with Muslim rebels in Bahia thirty years earlier. During his interrogation, Rufino told his life story, which is used to reconstruct the world in which he lived under slavery and in freedom on African shores, aboard slave ships, and in Brazil. An extraordinary Atlantic history carefully pieced together from the archives, The Story of Rufino illuminates the complexities of slavery and freedom in Africa and Brazil and the resilience of ethnic and religious identities.

Since its original publication in Portuguese in 2008, this first English translation of Divining Slavery has been extensively revised and updated, complete with new primary sources and a new bibliography. It tells the story of Domingos Sodre, an African-born priest who was enslaved in Bahia, Brazil in the nineteenth century. After obtaining his freedom, Sodre became a slave owner himself, and in 1862 was arrested on suspicion of receiving stolen goods from slaves in exchange for supposed 'witchcraft'. Using this incident as a catalyst, the book discusses African religion and its place in a slave society, analyzing its double role as a refuge for blacks as well as a bridge between classes and ethnic groups (such as whites who attended African rituals and sought help from African diviners and medicine men). Ultimately, Divining Slavery explores the fluidity and relativity of conditions such as slavery and freedom, African and local religions, personal and collective experience and identities in the lives of Africans in the Brazilian diaspora.

This award-winning social history of death and funeral rites during the early decades of Brazil's independence from Portugal focuses on the Cemiterada movement in Salvador, capital of the province of Bahia. The book opens with a lively account of the popular riot that ensued when, in 1836, the government condemned the traditional burial of bodies inside Catholic church buildings and granted a private company a monopoly over burials.

This episode is used by Reis to examine the customs of death and burial in Bahian society, explore the economic and religious conflicts behind the move for funerary reforms and the maintenance of traditional rituals of dying, and understand how people dealt with new concerns sparked by modernization and science. Viewing culture within its social context, he illuminates the commonalities and differences that shaped death and its rituals for rich and poor, men and women, slaves and masters, adults and children, foreigners and Brazilians.

This translation makes the book, originally published in Brazil in 1993, available in English for the first time.

Axe Bahia examines the unique cultural role played by Salvador, the coastal capital of the Brazilian state of Bahia. An internationally renowned center of Afro-Brazilian culture, Salvador has been a vibrant and important hub of African-inspired artistic practices in Latin America since the 1940s. This volume represents the most comprehensive investigation in the United States of Bahian arts to date and features essays by eighteen international scholars. While adding to popular understandings of core expressions of African heritage, such as the religion Candomble, the essays explore in depth the complexities of race and cultural affiliation in Brazil and the provocative ways in which artists have experienced and responded creatively to prevailing realities of Afro-Brazilian identity in Bahia. Lavishly illustrated, the book features works by artists ranging from modernists, among them Mario Cravo Neto, Rubem Valentim, and Pierre Verger, to contemporary artists Rommulo Vieira Conceicao, Caetano Dias, Helen Salomao, Ayrson Heraclito, and others-including a stunning array of sculpture, painting, photography, video, and installation art. The exhibition was part of the Getty's Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative.

Francisco de Paula Brito: A Black Publisher in Imperial Brazil is a biography of a merchant, printer, bookseller and publisher who lived in Rio de Janeiro from his birth in 1809 until his death in 1861. That period was key to the history of Brazil, because it coincided with the relocation of the Portuguese Court from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro (1808), Independence (1822) and the formation of the nation-state, the development of the press and the formation Brazilian literature, the expansion and elimination of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the growth of Rio de Janeiro's population and the coffee economy. Nevertheless, although it covers five generations of Paula Brito's family - men and women who left slavery in the eighteenth century - this book focuses on its protagonist's activities between the 1830s and 1850s. During that period, Francisco de Paula Brito became one of the central figures in the cultural and political scene in the Imperial capital, particularly through his work as a publisher. Paula Brito's success was due to several factors, including to his ability to forge solid alliances with the Empire's ruling elite. They included leading politicians responsible, for example, for the unification of the vast Brazilian territory centralized in Rio de Janeiro, for the maintenance of slavery and the illegal trafficking of Africans, as well as for the monopoly on violence against the poor and free population. Consequently, through the books and newspapers he published, Francisco de Paula Brito became part of a much larger project.

Francisco de Paula Brito is a biography of a merchant, printer, bookseller, and publisher who lived in Rio de Janeiro from his birth in 1809 until his death in 1861. That period was key to the history of Brazil, because it coincided with the relocation of the Portuguese Court from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro (1808); the dawning of Brazilian Independence (1822) and the formation of the nation-state; the development of the press and of Brazilian literature; the expansion and elimination of the trans-Atlantic slave trade; and the growth of Rio de Janeiro's population and the coffee economy. Nevertheless, although it covers five generations of Paula Brito's family-men and women who left slavery in the eighteenth century-this book focuses on its protagonist's activities between the 1830s and 1850s. During that period, Francisco de Paula Brito became one of the central figures in the cultural and political scene in the Imperial capital, particularly through his work as a publisher. Paula Brito's success was due in part to his ability to forge solid alliances with the Empire's ruling elite-among them leading politicians responsible for the unification of the vast Brazilian territory and for the maintenance of slavery and the illegal trafficking of Africans. Consequently, through the books and newspapers he published, Francisco de Paula Brito became part of a much larger project.