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In Voice of the Leopard: African Secret Societies and Cuba, Ivor L. Miller shows how African migrants and their political fraternities played a formative role in the history of Cuba. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, no large kingdoms controlled Nigeria and Cameroon's multilingual Cross River basin. Instead, each settlement had its own lodge of the initiation society called Ékpè, or “leopard,” which was the highest indigenous authority. Ékpè lodges ruled local communities while also managing regional and long-distance trade. Cross River Africans, enslaved and forcibly brought to colonial Cuba, reorganized their Ékpè clubs covertly in Havana and Matanzas into a mutual-aid society called Abakuá, which became foundational to Cuba's urban life and music. Miller's extensive fieldwork in Cuba and West Africa documents ritual languages and practices that survived the Middle Passage and evolved into a unifying charter for transplanted slaves and their successors. To gain deeper understanding of the material, Miller underwent Ékpè initiation rites in Nigeria after ten years' collaboration with Abakuá initiates in Cuba and the United States. He argues that Cuban music, art, and even politics rely on complexities of these African-inspired codes of conduct and leadership. Voice of the Leopard is an unprecedented tracing of an African title-society to its Caribbean incarnation, which has deeply influenced Cuba's creative energy and popular consciousness.

LA VOZ DE M.A.Y.O: TATA RAMBO is based on the oral history of Ramon Jaurigue, an orphan and WWII veteran who co-founded the Mexican, American, Yaqui, and Others (M.A.Y.O.) organization, which successfully lobbied the Tucson City Council to improve living and working conditions for members of the Pascua Yaqui tribe, paving the way to their federal recognition. Meanwhile, RamonÕs home life suffered as his focus was pulled from his family to the wider community, and from domesticity to the adrenaline of the campaign. A resonant, neglected slice of American history is brought to life for the first time with art by J. GONZO, letter art by BERNARDO BRICE, editing by CLAIRE NAPIER, and a script by HENRY BARAJASÑthe great-grandson of Ramon Jaurigue, a.k.a. Tata Rambo.

Hearing All the Voices is a tremendous resource for any adult who works with middle school aged adolescents. This work annotates over 500 multicultural books and gives ideas on how to group the books and use the books with students both in and out of the classroom.

Designed to help teachers and librarians identify books that provide K-12 students with an understanding of the cultures of Latino people.