Afro Cuban Myths

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Afro-Cuban Myths

Author : Rómulo Lachatañeré
Publisher : Markus Wiener Publishers
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 186 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Afro-Cuban Myths by : Rómulo Lachatañeré

Download or read book Afro-Cuban Myths written by Rómulo Lachatañeré and published by Markus Wiener Publishers. This book was released on 2005 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: African cults and religions enrich all aspects of Cuba's social, cultural and everyday life, and encompass all ethnic and social groups. Politics, art, and civil events such as weddings, funerals, festivals and carnivals all possess distinctly Afro-Cuban characteristics. Miguel Barnet provides a concise guide to the various traditions and branches of Afro-Cuban religions. He distinguishes between the two most important cult forms - the Regla de Ocha (Santeria), which promotes worship of the Oshira (gods), and the traditional oracles that originated in the old Yoruba city of lle-lfe', which promote a more animistic worldview. Africans who were brought to Cuba as slaves had to recreate their old traditions in their new Caribbean context. As their African heritage collided with Catholicism and with Native American and European traditions, certain African gods and traditions became more prominent while others lost their significance in the new Afro-Cuban culture. This book, the first systematic overview of the syncretization of the gods of African origin with Catholic saints, introduces the reader to a little-known side of Cuban culture.

Afro-Cuban Tales

Author : Lydia Cabrera
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
ISBN 13 : 0803264380
Total Pages : 193 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (32 download)

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Book Synopsis Afro-Cuban Tales by : Lydia Cabrera

Download or read book Afro-Cuban Tales written by Lydia Cabrera and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As much a storyteller as an ethnographer, Lydia Cabrera was captivated by a strange and magical new world revealed to her by her Afro-Cuban friends in early twentieth-century Havana. In Afro-Cuban Tales this world comes to teeming life, introducing English-speaking readers to a realm of tenuous boundaries between the natural and the supernatural, deities and mortals, the spiritual and the seemingly inanimate. Here readers will find a vibrant, imaginative record of African culture transplanted to Cuba and transformed over time, a passionate and subversive alternative to the dominant Western culture of the Americas. In this charmed realm of myth and legend, imaginative flights, and hard realities, Cabrera shows us a world turned upside down. In this domain guinea hens can make dour Asturians and the king of Spain dance; little fat cooking pots might prepare their own meals; the pope can send encyclicals about pumpkins; and officials can be defeated by the shrewdness of turtles. The first English translation of one of the most important writers on African culture in the Americas, the collection provides a fascinating view of how African traditions, myths, stories, and religions traveled to the New World?of how, in their tales, Africans in the Americas created a New World all their own.

Afro-Cuban Voices

Author : Pedro Pérez Sarduy
Publisher : University Press of Florida
ISBN 13 : 0813065550
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (13 download)

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Book Synopsis Afro-Cuban Voices by : Pedro Pérez Sarduy

Download or read book Afro-Cuban Voices written by Pedro Pérez Sarduy and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2020-03-23 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the forewords: "At a time when Cuba is undergoing immense economic and social changes, race becomes a kind of cultural litmus test for the national identity. . . . This anthology illustrates fully that it is possible to be both revolutionary and black in Cuba."—Manning Marable, Columbia University "The authors of Afro-Cuban Voices, also key actors in the new, unfolding dialogue about race in Cuba, make a seminal contribution through a forthright critique of ‘racial blind spots’ in official history and present-day racial discrimination."—James Early, director of cultural studies and communication, Smithsonian Institution From the series editor: "A courageous attempt to deal head-on with the issue of race in Cuba today. . . . Pérez Sarduy and Stubbs [seek to] put a human face on this debate, and do so well. The book will be received with relief by some and with frustration by others. Controversial it will undoubtedly be, since—as with most things Cuban—strong emotions are a given assumption. It will be an admirable beginning for the series and, it is hoped, will spark a much-needed debate in the United States on many aspects of the ‘Cuban question.’ It is about time."—John M. Kirk Based on the vivid firsthand testimony of prominent Afro-Cubans who live in Cuba, this book of interviews looks at ways that race affects daily life on the island. While celebrating their racial and national identity, the collected voices express an urgent need to end the silences and distortions of history in both pre- and postrevolutionary Cuba. The 14 people interviewed—of different generations and from different geographic areas of Cuba—come from the arts, the media, industry, academia, and medicine. They include a doctor who calls for joint U.S.-Cuban studies on high blood pressure and a craftsman who makes the batá drums used in Yoruba worship ceremonies. All responded to four controversial questions: What is it like to be black in Cuba? How has the revolution made a difference? To what extent is that difference true today? What can be done? Exposing the contradictions of both racial stereotyping and cultural assimilation, their eloquent answers make the case that the issue of race in Cuba, no matter how hard to define, will not be ignored. A volume in the series Contemporary Cuba, edited by John M. Kirk

Lydia Cabrera and the Construction of an Afro-Cuban Cultural Identity

Author : Edna M. Rodríguez-Plate
Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN 13 : 0807876283
Total Pages : 216 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (78 download)

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Book Synopsis Lydia Cabrera and the Construction of an Afro-Cuban Cultural Identity by : Edna M. Rodríguez-Plate

Download or read book Lydia Cabrera and the Construction of an Afro-Cuban Cultural Identity written by Edna M. Rodríguez-Plate and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2005-11-16 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lydia Cabrera (1900-1991), an upper-class white Cuban intellectual, spent many years traveling through Cuba collecting oral histories, stories, and music from Cubans of African descent. Her work is commonly viewed as an extension of the work of her famous brother-in-law, Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz, who initiated the study of Afro-Cubans and the concept of transculturation. Here, Edna Rodriguez-Mangual challenges this perspective, proposing that Cabrera's work offers an alternative to the hegemonizing national myth of Cuba articulated by Ortiz and others. Rodriguez-Mangual examines Cabrera's ethnographic essays and short stories in context. By blurring fact and fiction, anthropology and literature, Cabrera defied the scientific discourse used by other anthropologists. She wrote of Afro-Cubans not as objects but as subjects, and in her writings, whiteness, instead of blackness, is gazed upon as the "other." As Rodriguez-Mangual demonstrates, Cabrera rewrote the history of Cuba and its culture through imaginative means, calling into question the empirical basis of anthropology and placing Afro-Cuban contributions at the center of the literature that describes the Cuban nation and its national identity.

Afro-Cuban Cuisine

Author : Natalia Bolívar Aróstegui
Publisher : Editorial Jose Marti
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 116 pages
Book Rating : 4.F/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Afro-Cuban Cuisine by : Natalia Bolívar Aróstegui

Download or read book Afro-Cuban Cuisine written by Natalia Bolívar Aróstegui and published by Editorial Jose Marti. This book was released on 1998 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

AfroCuba

Author : Pedro Pérez Sarduy
Publisher : Ocean Press
ISBN 13 : 9781875284412
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (844 download)

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Book Synopsis AfroCuba by : Pedro Pérez Sarduy

Download or read book AfroCuba written by Pedro Pérez Sarduy and published by Ocean Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This anthology looks at the AfroCuban experience through the eyes of the island’s writers, scholars and artists. "A rich portrait of AfroCuba—one of the most vibrant and least well-documented of the black Caribbean diasporas."—Stuart Hall An insightful look at Cuba’s rich ethnic and cultural reality. What is it like to be black in Cuba? Does racism exist in a revolutionary society that claims to have abolished it? How does the legacy of slavery and segregation live on in today’s Cuba? Essays, poetry, extracts from novels, anthropological studies and political analysis are brought together by editors Jean Stubbs and Pedro Pérez to create an outstanding anthology of Cuban scholars, writers and artists. Drawing on an extensive knowledge of Cuba, the editors have produced a multi-faceted insight into Cuba’s right ethnic and cultural reality. The book is divided into three sections: The Die is Cast, Myth and Reality and Redrawing the Line, introducing the reader to a wide range of previously unavailable Cuban authors, in which dissenting voices speak alongside established writers, such as Fernando Ortiz. Jean Stubbs is a professor of Caribbean and Latin American History at the University of North London. She has been a visiting associate professor at Hunter College, CUNY (New York) and Rockefeller scholar at the University of Florida (Gainesville), the University of Puerto Rico and Florida International University. Stubbs has published several other books, including Cuba: The Test of Time. Pedro Pérez Sarduy is an AfroCuban poet and journalist. He was writer-in-residence at Columbia University and a Rockefeller visiting scholar at the University of Florida (Gainesville) and the University of Puerto Rico. He has been the recipient of several literary awards and regularly undertakes speaking tours in the United States.

Afro-Cuban Diasporas in the Atlantic World

Author : Solimar Otero
Publisher : University Rochester Press
ISBN 13 : 1580463266
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (84 download)

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Book Synopsis Afro-Cuban Diasporas in the Atlantic World by : Solimar Otero

Download or read book Afro-Cuban Diasporas in the Atlantic World written by Solimar Otero and published by University Rochester Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Afro-Cuban Diasporas in the Atlantic World explores how Yoruba and Afro-Cuban communities moved across the Atlantic between the Americas and Africa in successive waves in the nineteenth century. In Havana, Yoruba slaves from Lagos banded together to buy their freedom and sail home to Nigeria. Once in Lagos, this Cuban repatriate community became known as the Aguda. This community built their own neighborhood that celebrated their Afrolatino heritage. For these Yoruba and Afro-Cuban diasporic populations, nostalgic constructions of family and community play the role of narrating and locating a longed-for home. By providing a link between the workings of nostalgia and the construction of home, this volume re-theorizes cultural imaginaries as a source for diasporic community reinvention. Through ethnographic fieldwork and research in folkloristics, Otero reveals that the Aguda identify strongly with their Afro-Cuban roots in contemporary times. Their fluid identity moves from Yoruba to Cuban, and back again, in a manner that illustrates the truly cyclical nature of transnational Atlantic community affiliation. Solimar Otero is Associate Professor of English and a folklorist at Louisiana State University. Her research centers on gender, sexuality, Afro-Caribbean spirituality, and Yoruba traditional religion in folklore, literature and ethnography. Dr. Otero is the recipient of a Ruth Landes Memorial Research Fund grant (2013), a fellowship at the Harvard Divinity School's Women's Studies in Religion Program (2009 to 2010), and a Fulbright award (2001).

Santería Enthroned

Author : David H. Brown
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000124371
Total Pages : 870 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (1 download)

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Book Synopsis Santería Enthroned by : David H. Brown

Download or read book Santería Enthroned written by David H. Brown and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-10-24 with total page 870 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever since its emergence in colonial-era Cuba, Afro-Cuban Santería (or Lucumí) has displayed a complex dynamic of continuity and change in its institutions, rituals, and iconography. Originally published in 2003 Santería Enthroned combines art, history, cultural anthropology, and ethnohistory to show how Africans and their descendants have developed novel forms of religious practice in the face of relentless oppression. Focusing on the royal throne as a potent metaphor in Santería belief and practice it shows how negotiations among ideologically competing interests have shaped the religion’s symbols, rituals, and institutions from the nineteenth century to the present. Rich case studies of change in Cuba and the United States, including a New Jersey temple and South Carolina’s Oyotunji Village, reveal patterns of innovation similar to those found among rival Yoruba kingdoms in Nigeria. Throughout, the book argues for a theoretical perspective on culture as a field of potential strategies and "usuable pasts" that actors draw upon to craft new forms and identities – a perspective that will be invaluable to all students of the African Diaspora.

Forging Diaspora

Author : Frank Andre Guridy
Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN 13 : 0807833614
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (78 download)

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Book Synopsis Forging Diaspora by : Frank Andre Guridy

Download or read book Forging Diaspora written by Frank Andre Guridy and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cuba's geographic proximity to the United States and its centrality to U.S. imperial designs following the War of 1898 led to the creation of a unique relationship between Afro-descended populations in the two countries. In Forging Diaspora, Frank

Cuban Legends

Author : Salvador Bueno
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Cuban Legends by : Salvador Bueno

Download or read book Cuban Legends written by Salvador Bueno and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of Cuban legends aims to bring readers the best of a time-honoured tradition of storytelling in Cuba. The tales are retold by a diverse group of Cuban literary figures, their stories embracing a broad spectrum of Cuban history from the remote past to the modern era.

Crossing the Water

Author : Claire Garoutte
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Crossing the Water by : Claire Garoutte

Download or read book Crossing the Water written by Claire Garoutte and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the summer of 2000, two award-winning photographers, Claire Garoutte and Anneke Wambaugh, were researching Afro-Cuban religious practices in Santiago de Cuba, a city on the southeastern coast of Cuba. A chance encounter led them to the home of Santiago Castañeda Vera, a priest-practitioner of Santería, Palo Monte, and Espiritismo, a Cuban version of nineteenth-century European Spiritism. Out of that initial meeting, a unique collaboration developed. Santiago opened his home and many aspects of his spiritual practice to Garoutte and Wambaugh, who returned to his house many times during the next five years, cameras in hand. The result is Crossing the Water, an extraordinary visual record of Afro-Cuban religious experience. A book of more than 150 striking photographs in both black and white and color, Crossing the Water includes images of elaborate Santería altars and Palo spirit cauldrons, as well as of Santiago and his religious "family" engaged in ritual practices: the feeding of the spirits, spirit possession, and private and collective healing ceremonies. As the charismatic head of a large religious community, Santiago helps his godchildren and others who consult him to cope with physical illness, emotional crises, contentious relationships, legal problems, and the hardships born of day-to-day survival in contemporary Cuba. He draws on the distinct yet intertwined traditions of Santería, Palo Monte, and Espiritismo to foster healing of both mind and body--the three religions form a coherent theological whole for him. Santiago eventually became Garoutte's and Wambaugh's spiritual godfather, and Crossing the Water is informed by their experiences as initiates of Santería and Palo Monte. Their text provides nuanced, clear explanations of the objects and practices depicted in the images. Describing the powerful intensity of human-spirit interactions, and evoking the sights, smells, sounds, and choreography of ritual practice, Crossing the Water takes readers deep inside the intimate world of Afro-Cuban spirituality.

Suspect Freedoms

Author : Nancy Raquel Mirabal
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 0814761127
Total Pages : 325 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (147 download)

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Book Synopsis Suspect Freedoms by : Nancy Raquel Mirabal

Download or read book Suspect Freedoms written by Nancy Raquel Mirabal and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2017-01-10 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning in the early nineteenth century, Cubans migrated to New York City to organize and protest against Spanish colonial rule. While revolutionary wars raged in Cuba, expatriates envisioned, dissected, and redefined meanings of independence and nationhood. An underlying element was the concept of Cubanidad, a shared sense of what it meant to be Cuban. Deeply influenced by discussions of slavery, freedom, masculinity, and United States imperialism, the question of what and who constituted “being Cuban” remained in flux and often, suspect. The first book to explore Cuban racial and sexual politics in New York during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Suspect Freedoms chronicles the largely unexamined and often forgotten history of more than a hundred years of Cuban exile, migration, diaspora, and community formation. Nancy Raquel Mirabal delves into the rich cache of primary sources, archival documents, literary texts, club records, newspapers, photographs, and oral histories to write what Michel Rolph Trouillot has termed an “unthinkable history.” Situating this pivotal era within larger theoretical discussions of potential, future, visibility, and belonging, Mirabal shows how these transformations complicated meanings of territoriality, gender, race, power, and labor. She argues that slavery, nation, and the fear that Cuba would become “another Haiti” were critical in the making of early diasporic Cubanidades, and documents how, by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Afro-Cubans were authors of their own experiences; organizing movements, publishing texts, and establishing important political, revolutionary, and social clubs. Meticulously documented and deftly crafted, Suspect Freedoms unravels a nuanced and vital history.

Cuba (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize)

Author : Ada Ferrer
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1501154567
Total Pages : 576 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (11 download)

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Book Synopsis Cuba (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize) by : Ada Ferrer

Download or read book Cuba (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize) written by Ada Ferrer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-06-28 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1961, at the height of the Cold War, the United States severed diplomatic relations with Cuba, where a momentous revolution had taken power three years earlier. For more than half a century, the stand-off continued--through the tenure of ten American presidents and the fifty-year rule of Fidel Castro. His death in 2016, and the retirement of his brother and successor Raúl Castro in 2021, have spurred questions about the country's future. Meanwhile, politics in Washington--Barack Obama's opening to the island, Donald Trump's reversal of that policy, and the election of Joe Biden--have made the relationship between the two nations a subject of debate once more. Now, award-winning historian Ada Ferrer delivers an ambitious chronicle written for an era that demands a new reckoning with the island's past. Spanning more than five centuries, Cuba: An American History reveals the evolution of the modern nation, with its dramatic record of conquest and colonization, of slavery and freedom, of independence and revolutions made and unmade. Along the way, Ferrer explores the influence of the United States on Cuba and the many ways the island has been a recurring presence in US affairs. This is a story that will give Americans unexpected insights into the history of their own nation and, in so doing, help them imagine a new relationship with Cuba. Filled with rousing stories and characters, and drawing on more than thirty years of research in Cuba, Spain, and the United States--as well as the author's own extensive travel to the island over the same period--this is a stunning and monumental account like no other. --

From Afro-Cuban Rhythms to Latin Jazz

Author : Raul A. Fernandez
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520939441
Total Pages : 216 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (29 download)

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Book Synopsis From Afro-Cuban Rhythms to Latin Jazz by : Raul A. Fernandez

Download or read book From Afro-Cuban Rhythms to Latin Jazz written by Raul A. Fernandez and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2006-05-23 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the complexity of Cuban dance music and the webs that connect it, musically and historically, to other Caribbean music, to salsa, and to Latin Jazz. Establishing a scholarly foundation for the study of this music, Raul A. Fernandez introduces a set of terms, definitions, and empirical information that allow for a broader, more informed discussion. He presents fascinating musical biographies of prominent performers Cachao López, Mongo Santamaría, Armando Peraza, Patato Valdés, Francisco Aguabella, Cándido Camero, Chocolate Armenteros, and Celia Cruz. Based on interviews that the author conducted over a nine-year period, these profiles provide in-depth assessments of the musicians’ substantial contributions to both Afro-Cuban music and Latin Jazz. In addition, Fernandez examines the links between Cuban music and other Caribbean musics; analyzes the musical and poetic foundations of the Cuban son form; addresses the salsa phenomenon; and develops the aesthetic construct of sabor, central to Cuban music. Copub: Center for Black Music Research

Archives of Conjure

Author : Solimar Otero
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231550766
Total Pages : 137 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis Archives of Conjure by : Solimar Otero

Download or read book Archives of Conjure written by Solimar Otero and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-24 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Afrolatinx religious practices such as Cuban Espiritismo, Puerto Rican Santería, and Brazilian Candomblé, the dead tell stories. Communicating with and through mediums’ bodies, they give advice, make requests, and propose future rituals, creating a living archive that is coproduced by the dead. In this book, Solimar Otero explores how Afrolatinx spirits guide collaborative spiritual-scholarly activist work through rituals and the creation of material culture. By examining spirit mediumship through a Caribbean cross-cultural poetics, she shows how divinities and ancestors serve as active agents in shaping the experiences of gender, sexuality, and race. Otero argues that what she calls archives of conjure are produced through residual transcriptions or reverberations of the stories of the dead whose archives are stitched, beaded, smoked, and washed into official and unofficial repositories. She investigates how sites like the ocean, rivers, and institutional archives create connected contexts for unlocking the spatial activation of residual transcriptions. Drawing on over ten years of archival research and fieldwork in Cuba, Otero centers the storytelling practices of Afrolatinx women and LGBTQ spiritual practitioners alongside Caribbean literature and performance. Archives of Conjure offers vital new perspectives on ephemerality, temporality, and material culture, unraveling undertheorized questions about how spirits shape communities of practice, ethnography, literature, and history and revealing the deeply connected nature of art, scholarship, and worship.

Reyita

Author : María de los Reyes Castillo Bueno
Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780822325932
Total Pages : 196 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (259 download)

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Book Synopsis Reyita by : María de los Reyes Castillo Bueno

Download or read book Reyita written by María de los Reyes Castillo Bueno and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Assisted by her daughter, Daisy Rubiera Castillo, the author recounts her life as a black woman struggling with prejudice and change in Cuba over the span of 90 years. Known as "Reyita", Maria de Los Reyes Castillo Bueno starts her story with the abduction of her grandmother by slave traders and shares her own experiences as a mother, laborer, and revolutionary.

The Light Inside

Author : David H. Brown
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000008185
Total Pages : 467 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis The Light Inside by : David H. Brown

Download or read book The Light Inside written by David H. Brown and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-08-15 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 2003, The Light Inside is a ground-breaking study of an Afro-Cuban secret society, its sacred arts, and their role in modern Cuban cultural history. Enslaved Africans and creoles developed the Abakuá Society, a system of men’s fraternal lodges, in urban Cuba beginnings in 1836. Drawing on years of fieldwork in the country, the book’s novel approach builds on close readings of dazzling Abakuá altars, chalk-drawn signs, and hooded masquerades. It looks at the art history of Abakuá altars, not only tracing changing styles but also how they evolve through cycles of tradition and renovation. The Light Inside reflects the essence of the artists’ creativity and experience: through adornment, altars project the powerful spirituality of Abakuá practice, an aesthetic strategy. The book also traces a biography of Abakuá objects – their shifting forms and meanings – as they participated in successive periods of Cuban cultural history. The book constructs close rhetorical and visual analyses of changing representations of the Abakuá, spanning nineteenth-century arts and letters, modern ethnographic texts, museum displays, paintings, and late twentieth century commercial kitsch. This interdisciplinary work combines art history, African Diaspora, cultural studies and cultural anthropology with Latin American.