Yoruba Traditions and African American Religious Nationalism

Download Yoruba Traditions and African American Religious Nationalism PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : UNM Press
ISBN 13 : 0826350771
Total Pages : 429 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (263 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Yoruba Traditions and African American Religious Nationalism by : Tracey E. Hucks

Download or read book Yoruba Traditions and African American Religious Nationalism written by Tracey E. Hucks and published by UNM Press. This book was released on 2012-05-16 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 Santer'a 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.

African American Religion: A Very Short Introduction

Download African American Religion: A Very Short Introduction PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199373140
Total Pages : 161 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (993 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis African American Religion: A Very Short Introduction by : Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

Download or read book African American Religion: A Very Short Introduction written by Eddie S. Glaude Jr. and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-08-27 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the first African American denomination was established in Philadelphia in 1818, churches have gone beyond their role as spiritual guides in African American communities and have served as civic institutions, spaces for education, and sites for the cultivation of individuality and identities in the face of limited or non-existent freedom. In this Very Short Introduction, Eddie S. Glaude Jr. explores the history and circumstances of African American religion through three examples: conjure, African American Christianity, and African American Islam. He argues that the phrase "African American religion" is meaningful only insofar as it describes how through religion, African Americans have responded to oppressive conditions including slavery, Jim Crow apartheid, and the pervasive and institutionalized discrimination that exists today. This bold claim frames his interpretation of the historical record of the wide diversity of religious experiences in the African American community. He rejects the common tendency to racialize African American religious experiences as an inherent proclivity towards religiousness and instead focuses on how religious communities and experiences have developed in the African American community and the context in which these developments took place. About the Series: Oxford's Very Short Introductions series offers concise and original introductions to a wide range of subjects--from Islam to Sociology, Politics to Classics, Literary Theory to History, and Archaeology to the Bible. Not simply a textbook of definitions, each volume in this series provides trenchant and provocative--yet always balanced and complete--discussions of the central issues in a given discipline or field. Every Very Short Introduction gives a readable evolution of the subject in question, demonstrating how the subject has developed and how it has influenced society. Eventually, the series will encompass every major academic discipline, offering all students an accessible and abundant reference library. Whatever the area of study that one deems important or appealing, whatever the topic that fascinates the general reader, the Very Short Introductions series has a handy and affordable guide that will likely prove indispensable.

Santeria from Africa to the New World

Download Santeria from Africa to the New World PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780253211149
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (111 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Santeria from Africa to the New World by : George Brandon

Download or read book Santeria from Africa to the New World written by George Brandon and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1997-03-22 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "On his own terms, Brandon more than fulfills his promise to take the reader on the transatlantic journey of the orisha and to explore the complexities of African memory in the diaspora." —American Historical Review "He adeptly addresses broader issues, such as power relations within Caribbean slavery, multiculturalism, and the forms of religious accommodation to cultural change. In addition, he offers a fresh and cogent assessment of the production and reproduction of African beliefs and practices in new contexts. Brandon's exemplary archival research is supplemented by skillful participant observation." —Choice The Yoruba religious tradition arose in West Africa, but its influence has spread beyond Africa to millions of adherents in the Americas as well. Santeria from Africa to the New World retraces one path taken by this tradition—a path from Africa to Cuba and to New York City. George Brandon examines the religion's transatlantic route through Cuban Santeria, Puerto Rican Espiritismo, and Black Nationalism. In following the historical and anthropological evolution of the Yoruba religion, Brandon discusses broader questions of power, multiculturalism, cultural change, and the production and reproduction of African retentions.

Mapping Yorùbá Networks

Download Mapping Yorùbá Networks PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 0822385414
Total Pages : 383 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (223 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Mapping Yorùbá Networks by : Kamari Maxine Clarke

Download or read book Mapping Yorùbá Networks written by Kamari Maxine Clarke and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2004-07-12 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Three flags fly in the palace courtyard of Òyótúnjí African Village. One represents black American emancipation from slavery, one black nationalism, and the third the establishment of an ancient Yorùbá Empire in the state of South Carolina. Located sixty-five miles southwest of Charleston, Òyótúnjí is a Yorùbá revivalist community founded in 1970. Mapping Yorùbá Networks is an innovative ethnography of Òyótúnjí and a theoretically sophisticated exploration of how Yorùbá òrìsà voodoo religious practices are reworked as expressions of transnational racial politics. Drawing on several years of multisited fieldwork in the United States and Nigeria, Kamari Maxine Clarke describes Òyótúnjí in vivid detail—the physical space, government, rituals, language, and marriage and kinship practices—and explores how ideas of what constitutes the Yorùbá past are constructed. She highlights the connections between contemporary Yorùbá transatlantic religious networks and the post-1970s institutionalization of roots heritage in American social life. Examining how the development of a deterritorialized network of black cultural nationalists became aligned with a lucrative late-twentieth-century roots heritage market, Clarke explores the dynamics of Òyótúnjí Village’s religious and tourist economy. She discusses how the community generates income through the sale of prophetic divinatory consultations, African market souvenirs—such as cloth, books, candles, and carvings—and fees for community-based tours and dining services. Clarke accompanied Òyótúnjí villagers to Nigeria, and she describes how these heritage travelers often returned home feeling that despite the separation of their ancestors from Africa as a result of transatlantic slavery, they—more than the Nigerian Yorùbá—are the true claimants to the ancestral history of the Great Òyó Empire of the Yorùbá people. Mapping Yorùbá Networks is a unique look at the political economy of homeland identification and the transnational construction and legitimization of ideas such as authenticity, ancestry, blackness, and tradition.

Black Atlantic Religion

Download Black Atlantic Religion PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400833973
Total Pages : 392 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Black Atlantic Religion by : J. Lorand Matory

Download or read book Black Atlantic Religion written by J. Lorand Matory and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-02-09 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Black Atlantic Religion illuminates the mutual transformation of African and African-American cultures, highlighting the example of the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé religion. This book contests both the recent conviction that transnationalism is new and the long-held supposition that African culture endures in the Americas only among the poorest and most isolated of black populations. In fact, African culture in the Americas has most flourished among the urban and the prosperous, who, through travel, commerce, and literacy, were well exposed to other cultures. Their embrace of African religion is less a "survival," or inert residue of the African past, than a strategic choice in their circum-Atlantic, multicultural world. With counterparts in Nigeria, the Benin Republic, Haiti, Cuba, Trinidad, and the United States, Candomblé is a religion of spirit possession, dance, healing, and blood sacrifice. Most surprising to those who imagine Candomblé and other such religions as the products of anonymous folk memory is the fact that some of this religion's towering leaders and priests have been either well-traveled writers or merchants, whose stake in African-inspired religion was as much commercial as spiritual. Morever, they influenced Africa as much as Brazil. Thus, for centuries, Candomblé and its counterparts have stood at the crux of enormous transnational forces. Vividly combining history and ethnography, Matory spotlights a so-called "folk" religion defined not by its closure or internal homogeneity but by the diversity of its connections to classes and places often far away. Black Atlantic Religion sets a new standard for the study of transnationalism in its subaltern and often ancient manifestations.

The Yoruba from Prehistory to the Present

Download The Yoruba from Prehistory to the Present PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107064600
Total Pages : 519 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (7 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Yoruba from Prehistory to the Present by : Aribidesi Usman

Download or read book The Yoruba from Prehistory to the Present written by Aribidesi Usman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-04 with total page 519 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rich and accessible account of Yoruba history, society and culture from the pre-colonial period to the present.

Afro-Latin American Studies

Download Afro-Latin American Studies PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1316832325
Total Pages : 663 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (168 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Afro-Latin American Studies by : Alejandro de la Fuente

Download or read book Afro-Latin American Studies written by Alejandro de la Fuente and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-26 with total page 663 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alejandro de la Fuente and George Reid Andrews offer the first systematic, book-length survey of humanities and social science scholarship on the exciting field of Afro-Latin American studies. Organized by topic, these essays synthesize and present the current state of knowledge on a broad variety of topics, including Afro-Latin American music, religions, literature, art history, political thought, social movements, legal history, environmental history, and ideologies of racial inclusion. This volume connects the region's long history of slavery to the major political, social, cultural, and economic developments of the last two centuries. Written by leading scholars in each of those topics, the volume provides an introduction to the field of Afro-Latin American studies that is not available from any other source and reflects the disciplinary and thematic richness of this emerging field.

Women in Yoruba Religions

Download Women in Yoruba Religions PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 1479814016
Total Pages : 128 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (798 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Women in Yoruba Religions by : Oyèrónké Oládém?

Download or read book Women in Yoruba Religions written by Oyèrónké Oládém? and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2022-07-19 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uncovers the influence of Yoruba culture on women’s religious lives and leadership in religions practiced by Yoruba people Women in Yoruba Religions examines the profound influence of Yoruba culture in Yoruba religion, Christianity, Islam, and Afro-Diasporic religions such as Santeria and Candomblé, placing gender relations in historical and social contexts. While the coming of Christianity and Islam to Yorubaland has posed significant challenges to Yoruba gender relations by propagating patriarchal gender roles, the resources within Yoruba culture have enabled women to contest the full acceptance of those new norms. Oyeronke Olademo asserts that Yoruba women attain and wield agency in family and society through their economic and religious roles, and Yoruba operate within a system of gender balance, so that neither of the sexes can be subsumed in the other. Olademo utilizes historical and phenomenological methods, incorporating impressive data from interviews and participant-observation, showing how religion is at the core of Yoruba lived experiences and is intricately bound up in all sectors of daily life in Yorubaland and abroad in the diaspora.

Christianity, Islam, and Orisa-Religion

Download Christianity, Islam, and Orisa-Religion PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520285859
Total Pages : 311 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (22 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Christianity, Islam, and Orisa-Religion by : J.D.Y. Peel

Download or read book Christianity, Islam, and Orisa-Religion written by J.D.Y. Peel and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s open access publishing program for monographs. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. The Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria are exceptional for the copresence among them of three religious traditions: Islam, Christianity, and the indigenous orisa religion. In this comparative study, at once historical and anthropological, Peel explores the intertwined character of the three religions and the dense imbrication of religion in all aspects of Yoruba history up to the present. For over 400 years, the Yoruba have straddled two geocultural spheres: one reaching north over the Sahara to the world of Islam, the other linking them to the Euro-American world via the Atlantic. These two external spheres were the source of contrasting cultural influences, notably those emanating from the world religions. However, the Yoruba not only imported Islam and Christianity but also exported their own orisa religion to the New World. Before the voluntary modern diaspora that has brought many Yoruba to Europe and the Americas, tens of thousands were sold as slaves in the New World, bringing with them the worship of the orisa. Peel offers deep insight into important contemporary themes such as religious conversion, new religious movements, relations between world religions, the conditions of religious violence, the transnational flows of contemporary religion, and the interplay between tradition and the demands of an ever-changing present. In the process, he makes a major theoretical contribution to the anthropology of world religions.

Spiritual Citizenship

Download Spiritual Citizenship PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 0822372584
Total Pages : 251 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (223 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Spiritual Citizenship by : N. Fadeke Castor

Download or read book Spiritual Citizenship written by N. Fadeke Castor and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-09 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Spiritual Citizenship N. Fadeke Castor employs the titular concept to illuminate how Ifá/Orisha practices informed by Yoruba cosmology shape local, national, and transnational belonging in African diasporic communities in Trinidad and beyond. Drawing on almost two decades of fieldwork in Trinidad, Castor outlines how the political activism and social upheaval of the 1970s set the stage for African diasporic religions to enter mainstream Trinidadian society. She establishes how the postcolonial performance of Ifá/Orisha practices in Trinidad fosters a sense of belonging that invigorates its practitioners to work toward freedom, equality, and social justice. Demonstrating how spirituality is inextricable from the political project of black liberation, Castor illustrates the ways in which Ifá/Orisha beliefs and practices offer Trinidadians the means to strengthen belonging throughout the diaspora, access past generations, heal historical wounds, and envision a decolonial future.

African American Religions, 1500–2000

Download African American Religions, 1500–2000 PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 0521198534
Total Pages : 437 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (211 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis African American Religions, 1500–2000 by : Sylvester A. Johnson

Download or read book African American Religions, 1500–2000 written by Sylvester A. Johnson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-08-06 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rich account of the long history of Black religion from the dawn of Western colonialism to the rise of the national security paradigm.

The Oxford Handbook of African American Theology

Download The Oxford Handbook of African American Theology PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Oxford Handbooks
ISBN 13 : 0199755655
Total Pages : 541 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (997 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of African American Theology by : Katie G. Cannon

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of African American Theology written by Katie G. Cannon and published by Oxford Handbooks. This book was released on 2014 with total page 541 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on a thematic and topical structure, this handbook provides scholars and advanced students detailed description, analysis, and constructive discussions concerning African American theology - in the forms of black and womanist theologies. This volume surveys the academic content of African American theology by highlighting its sources; doctrines; internal debates; current challenges; and future prospects, in order to present key topics related to the wider palette of black religion in a sustained scholarly format.

African American Religion: A Very Short Introduction

Download African American Religion: A Very Short Introduction PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199373132
Total Pages : 161 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (993 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis African American Religion: A Very Short Introduction by : Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

Download or read book African American Religion: A Very Short Introduction written by Eddie S. Glaude Jr. and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-08-27 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the first African American denomination was established in Philadelphia in 1818, churches have gone beyond their role as spiritual guides in African American communities and have served as civic institutions, spaces for education, and sites for the cultivation of individuality and identities in the face of limited or non-existent freedom. In this Very Short Introduction, Eddie S. Glaude Jr. explores the history and circumstances of African American religion through three examples: conjure, African American Christianity, and African American Islam. He argues that the phrase "African American religion" is meaningful only insofar as it describes how through religion, African Americans have responded to oppressive conditions including slavery, Jim Crow apartheid, and the pervasive and institutionalized discrimination that exists today. This bold claim frames his interpretation of the historical record of the wide diversity of religious experiences in the African American community. He rejects the common tendency to racialize African American religious experiences as an inherent proclivity towards religiousness and instead focuses on how religious communities and experiences have developed in the African American community and the context in which these developments took place. About the Series: Oxford's Very Short Introductions series offers concise and original introductions to a wide range of subjects--from Islam to Sociology, Politics to Classics, Literary Theory to History, and Archaeology to the Bible. Not simply a textbook of definitions, each volume in this series provides trenchant and provocative--yet always balanced and complete--discussions of the central issues in a given discipline or field. Every Very Short Introduction gives a readable evolution of the subject in question, demonstrating how the subject has developed and how it has influenced society. Eventually, the series will encompass every major academic discipline, offering all students an accessible and abundant reference library. Whatever the area of study that one deems important or appealing, whatever the topic that fascinates the general reader, the Very Short Introductions series has a handy and affordable guide that will likely prove indispensable.

The Ground Has Shifted

Download The Ground Has Shifted PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 1479897183
Total Pages : 325 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (798 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Ground Has Shifted by : Walter Earl Fluker

Download or read book The Ground Has Shifted written by Walter Earl Fluker and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Honorable Mention, Theology and Religious Studies PROSE Award A powerful insight into the historical and cultural roles of the Black church If we are in a post-racial era, then what is the future of the Black Church? If the US will at some time in the future be free from discrimination and prejudices that are based on race how will that affect the church’s very identity? In The Ground Has Shifted, Walter Earl Fluker passionately and thoroughly discusses the historical and current role of the Black church and argues that the older race-based language and metaphors of religious discourse have outlived their utility. He offers instead a larger, global vision for the Black church that focuses on young Black men and other disenfranchised groups who have been left behind in a world of globalized capital. Lyrically written with an emphasis on the dynamic and fluid movement of life itself, Fluker argues that the church must find new ways to use race as an emancipatory instrument if it is to remain central in Black life, and he points the way for a new generation of church leaders, scholars and activists to reclaim the Black church’s historical identity and to turn to the task of infusing character, civility, and a sense of community among its congregants.

Rethinking American History in a Global Age

Download Rethinking American History in a Global Age PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520230582
Total Pages : 437 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (22 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Rethinking American History in a Global Age by : Thomas Bender

Download or read book Rethinking American History in a Global Age written by Thomas Bender and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2002-05-14 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In One eloquent essay after another, some of the wisest historians of our time write American history in a grand cosmopolitan context. From the era of discovery to the present, histories that we thought we knew—of labor, of race relations, of politics, of gender relations, of diplomacy, of ethnicity—are more richly understood when causes and consequences are traced throughout the globe. One emerges invigorated, ready to welcome a new American history for a new international century."—Linda K. Kerber, author of No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship "Rethinking American History in a Global Age is an extremely stimulating and thought-provoking collection of essays written by leading historians who offer wider contexts for illuminating the traditional themes and issues of American national history. Particularly impressive is the book's combination of caution and original, sometimes daring insights."—David Brion Davis, author of In the Image of God: Religion, Moral Values, and Our Heritage of Slavery "For decades American historians have been urging one another to place our culture in comparative or transnational perspective. Thomas Bender's unique volume includes not only essays theorizing such efforts and essays exemplifying such work at its most successful and its most provocative, it also provides more skeptical assessments questioning whether American historians can meet the challenge of overcoming our longstanding national preoccupations. Rethinking American History in a Global Age is an indispensable book that will shape the work of a rising generation of historians whose horizons will extend beyond our own shores."—James T. Kloppenberg, author of The Virtues of Liberalism

Keywords for African American Studies

Download Keywords for African American Studies PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 1479888532
Total Pages : 267 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (798 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Keywords for African American Studies by : Erica R. Edwards

Download or read book Keywords for African American Studies written by Erica R. Edwards and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2018-11-27 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduces key terms, interdisciplinary research, debates, and histories for African American Studies As the longest-standing interdisciplinary field, African American Studies has laid the foundation for critically analyzing issues of race, ethnicity, and culture within the academy and beyond. This volume assembles the keywords of this field for the first time, exploring not only the history of those categories but their continued relevance in the contemporary moment. Taking up a vast array of issues such as slavery, colonialism, prison expansion, sexuality, gender, feminism, war, and popular culture, Keywords for African American Studies showcases the startling breadth that characterizes the field. Featuring an august group of contributors across the social sciences and the humanities, the keywords assembled within the pages of this volume exemplify the depth and range of scholarly inquiry into Black life in the United States. Connecting lineages of Black knowledge production to contemporary considerations of race, gender, class, and sexuality, Keywords for African American Studies provides a model for how the scholarship of the field can meet the challenges of our social world.

Religion in the Kitchen

Download Religion in the Kitchen PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 1479839558
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (798 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Religion in the Kitchen by : Elizabeth Pérez

Download or read book Religion in the Kitchen written by Elizabeth Pérez and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2016-02-16 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Honorable Mention, 2019 Barbara T. Christian Literary Award, given by the Caribbean Studies Association Winner, 2017 Clifford Geertz Prize in the Anthropology of Religion, presented by the Society for the Anthropology of Religion section of the American Anthropological Association Finalist, 2017 Albert J. Raboteau Prize for the Best Book in Africana Religions presented by the Journal of Africana Religions An examination of the religious importance of food among Caribbean and Latin American communities Before honey can be offered to the Afro-Cuban deity Ochún, it must be tasted, to prove to her that it is good. In African-inspired religions throughout the Caribbean, Latin America, and the United States, such gestures instill the attitudes that turn participants into practitioners. Acquiring deep knowledge of the diets of the gods and ancestors constructs adherents’ identities; to learn to fix the gods’ favorite dishes is to be “seasoned” into their service. In this innovative work, Elizabeth Pérez reveals how seemingly trivial "micropractices" such as the preparation of sacred foods, are complex rituals in their own right. Drawing on years of ethnographic research in Chicago among practitioners of Lucumí, the transnational tradition popularly known as Santería, Pérez focuses on the behind-the-scenes work of the primarily women and gay men responsible for feeding the gods. She reveals how cooking and talking around the kitchen table have played vital socializing roles in Black Atlantic religions. Entering the world of divine desires and the varied flavors that speak to them, this volume takes a fresh approach to the anthropology of religion. Its richly textured portrait of a predominantly African-American Lucumí community reconceptualizes race, gender, sexuality, and affect in the formation of religious identity, proposing that every religion coalesces and sustains itself through its own secret recipe of micropractices.