Black Women’s Literature of the Americas: Griots and Goddesses

ISBN-13: 9781032067162 / Angielski

Tonia Leigh Wind

Opis

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.

Recenzje

"Black Women’s Literature of the Americas: Griots and Goddesses is thoroughly researched, logical in argument progression, and deeply engaging and persuasive in its clear narrative. The larger argument of the book is instructive: it prioritizes historical and literary texts from Brazil, the Caribbean, and the United States to develop a comparative study of how the discussed “griots” and “goddesses” strategy of negotiation of issues of identity and belonging through paradigms of (re)memory and the Sacred. This is a book of lasting value and relevance to those interested in transmission of African women throughout the Americas, particularly to future generations of women of African descent."

Ibigbolade Simon Aderibigbe, PhD, University of Georgia

 

"Tonia Leigh Wind fulfills through her cultural studies, specifically on the perspective of gender, a great contribution to academic studies that highlight this critical and analytical analysis in order to unveil frameworks that give way to a current discussion with regard to topics relating to power and the validation of discourses."

Dr. Iêdo de Oliveira Paes, Federal Rural University of Pernambuco

 

"Griots and Goddesses is an important contribution to deeper understandings of Black women’s voices in historical and literary texts and spiritual practice from the Spanish speaking Caribbean, Brazil and the U.S. It is a timely exploration of Black women’s engagements with the Sacred as contestation and creations of community as sites of empowerment for students, scholars and interested readers alike."

Dr. Lesley Feracho, University of Georgia

 

"With rare humility and extreme technical competence, Tonia Wind listens to the voices dispersed over hundreds of years and by millions of individuals to weave the conclusion of a female narrative, in which griots, orishas, and writers are medium between worlds to sustain survival and rebirth of the African soul in the Americas."

Dr. Nilma Gonçalves Lacerda, Fluminense Federal University

 

"At a moment when historical racial injustice and social and economic inequalities have, once again, been blatantly exposed, Wind’s book powerfully reveals representations of diasporic enslaved Black women across the Americas, whose spirituality is not only a cry for liberation but a vigorous instrument of collective resistance."

Dr. Núria Vilanova, American University

Spis treści

1. INTRODUCTION. 2. EMBARKATIONS AND DISEMBARKATIONS: THE VOICES OF THE ORISHAS IN THE AMERICAS. 3. YEMANJA AND OSHUN: AFRICAN GODDESSES IN DIALOGUE WITH THE AMERICAS. 4. MEMORY AND (RE)MEMORY IN WORKS OF BLACK WOMEN WRITERS. 5. MAPPING THE DIVINE IN THE AFRICAN DIASPORA. 6. GODDESSES: MEDIUMS OF WORLDS. 7. GRIOTS: GUARDIANS OF UNIVERSAL KNOWLEDGE.  8. NEGOTIATING GENDER AND MATERNITY UNDER THE YOKE OF SLAVERY. 9. MANIFESTATIONS OF SEXUALITY AND SPIRITUALITY: A LITERARY PERSPECTIVE. 10. CONCLUSIONS.

O autorze

Tonia Leigh Wind completed her PhD at the University of Georgia, USA and is currently a Teaching Associate of Portuguese at the University of Nottingham in the UK.