'Reversing Sail succeeds beautifully in its goal of introducing readers to the challenges and rewards of studying the African diaspora and laying out categories for making sense of an enormously rich subject. In so doing, Gomez demonstrates the value of approaching the stories of the African diaspora with a 'diasporic lens.'' Harvey Hill, Anglican and Episcopal History Review
Part I. 'Old' World Dimensions and the First Wave: 1. Antiquity; 2. Africans and the Bible; 3. Africans and the Islamic World; Part II. 'New' World Realities and Diaspora's Second Wave (to 1945): 4. Transatlantic moment and the dawn of modernity; 5. Enslavement; 6. Asserting the right to be; 7. Reconnecting; Part III. Empire's Dismantling and the Third Wave (since 1945): 8. Movement people; 9. Global Africa in the era of Mandela and Obama; Epilogue; Index.