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Obeah, Orisa, and Religious Identity in Trinidad is an expansive
two-volume examination of social imaginaries concerning Obeah and
Yoruba-Orisa from colonialism to the present. Analyzing their
entangled histories and systems of devotion, Tracey E. Hucks and
Dianne M. Stewart articulate how these religions were criminalized
during slavery and colonialism yet still demonstrated autonomous
modes of expression and self-defense. In Volume I, Obeah, Hucks
traces the history of African religious repression in colonial
Trinidad through the late nineteenth century. Drawing on sources
ranging from colonial records, laws, and legal transcripts to
travel diaries, literary fiction, and written correspondence, she
documents the persecution and violent penalization of African
religious practices encoded under the legal classification of
"obeah." A cult of antiblack fixation emerged as white settlers
defined themselves in opposition to Obeah, which they imagined as
terrifying African witchcraft. These preoccupations revealed the
fears that bound whites to one another. At the same time, persons
accused of obeah sought legal vindication and marshaled their own
spiritual and medicinal technologies to fortify the cultural
heritages, religious identities, and life systems of
African-diasporic communities in Trinidad.
Obeah, Orisa, and Religious Identity in Trinidad is an expansive
two-volume examination of social imaginaries concerning Obeah and
Yoruba-Orisa from colonialism to the present. Analyzing their
entangled histories and systems of devotion, Tracey E. Hucks and
Dianne M. Stewart articulate how these religions were criminalized
during slavery and colonialism yet still demonstrated autonomous
modes of expression and self-defense. In Volume I, Obeah, Hucks
traces the history of African religious repression in colonial
Trinidad through the late nineteenth century. Drawing on sources
ranging from colonial records, laws, and legal transcripts to
travel diaries, literary fiction, and written correspondence, she
documents the persecution and violent penalization of African
religious practices encoded under the legal classification of
"obeah." A cult of antiblack fixation emerged as white settlers
defined themselves in opposition to Obeah, which they imagined as
terrifying African witchcraft. These preoccupations revealed the
fears that bound whites to one another. At the same time, persons
accused of obeah sought legal vindication and marshaled their own
spiritual and medicinal technologies to fortify the cultural
heritages, religious identities, and life systems of
African-diasporic communities in Trinidad.
Exploring the Yoruba tradition in the United States, Hucks begins
with the story of Nana Oseijeman Adefunmi's personal search for
identity and meaning as a young man in Detroit in the 1930s and
1940s. She traces his development as an artist, religious leader,
and founder of several African-influenced religio-cultural projects
in Harlem and later in the South. Adefunmi was part of a generation
of young migrants attracted to the bohemian lifestyle of New York
City and the black nationalist fervor of Harlem. Cofounding Shango
Temple in 1959, Yoruba Temple in 1960, and Oyotunji African Village
in 1970, Adefunmi and other African Americans in that period
renamed themselves ""Yorubas"""" and engaged in the task of
transforming Cuban Santeria into a new religious expression that
satisfied their racial and nationalist leanings and eventually
helped to place African Americans on a global religious schema
alongside other Yoruba practitioners in Africa and the
diaspora.Alongside the story of Adefunmi, Hucks weaves historical
and sociological analyses of the relationship between black
cultural nationalism and reinterpretations of the meaning of Africa
from within the African American community.Part of the Religions of
the Americas Series
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