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 II, Orisa, Stewart scrutinizes the West African heritage and religious imagination of Yoruba-Orisa devotees in Trinidad from the mid-nineteenth century to the present and explores their meaning-making traditions in the wake of slavery and colonialism. She investigates the pivotal periods of nineteenth-century liberated African resettlement, the twentieth-century Black Power movement, and subsequent campaigns for the civil right to religious freedom in Trinidad. Disrupting syncretism frameworks, Stewart probes the salience of Africa as a religious symbol and the prominence of Africana nations and religious nationalisms in projects of black belonging and identity formation, including those of Orisa mothers. Contributing to global womanist thought and activism, Yoruba-Orisa spiritual mothers disclose the fullness of the black religious imagination's affective, hermeneutic, and political capacities.

About the Author
Dianne M. Stewart is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Religion and African American Studies at Emory University and author of Three Eyes for the Journey: African Dimensions of the Jamaican Religious Experience and Black Women, Black Love: America's War on African American Marriage.

Reviews

"Stewart's volume masterfully probes African Trinidadians' use of Yoruba identified ritual poetics and social formations. ... These two volumes will be of very great interest to scholars working in Caribbean and African Diaspora Religions."

-- Alexander Rocklin * Nova Religio *

"[A] theoretically sophisticated and intellectually stimulating publication by two of the foremost scholars of African heritage religions working in the academy today."

-- Brendan Jamal Thornton * Journal of the American Academy of Religion *



Book Information
ISBN 9781478014867
Author Dianne M. Stewart
Format Paperback
Page Count 368
Imprint Duke University Press
Publisher Duke University Press
Weight(grams) 522g