Ã’sun is a brilliant deity whose imagery and worldwide devotion demand broad and deep scholarly reflection. Contributors to the ground-breaking Africa's Ogun, edited by Sandra Barnes (Indiana University Press, 1997), explored the complex nature of Ogun, the orisa who transforms life through iron and technology. Ã’sun across the Waters continues this exploration of Yoruba religion by documenting Ã’sun religion. Ã’sun presents a dynamic example of the resilience and renewed importance of traditional Yoruba images in negotiating spiritual experience, social identity, and political power in contemporary Africa and the African diaspora. The 17 contributors to Ã’sun across the Waters delineate the special dimensions of Ã’sun religion as it appears through multiple disciplines in multiple cultural contexts. Tracing the extent of Ã’sun traditions takes us across the waters and back again. Ã’sun traditions continue to grow and change as they flow and return from their sources in Africa and the Americas.

Honorable Mention, Latin American Studies Association Haiti-Dominican Republic Section Isis Duarte Book Prize Gathering oral stories and visual art from Haiti and two of its "motherlands" in Africa, Istwa across the Water recovers the submerged histories of the island through methods drawn from its deep spiritual and cultural traditions. Toni Pressley-Sanon employs three theoretical anchors to bring together parts of the African diaspora that are profoundly fractured because of the slave trade. The first is the Vodou concept of marasa, or twinned entities, which she uses to identify parts of Dahomey (the present-day Benin Republic) and the Kongo region as Haiti's twinned sites of cultural production. Second, she draws on poet Kamau Brathwaite's idea of tidalectics—the back-and-forth movement of ocean waves—as a way to look at the cultural exchange set in motion by the transatlantic movement of captives. Finally, Pressley-Sanon searches out the places where history and memory intersect in story, expressed by the Kreyòl term istwa. Challenging the tendency to read history linearly, this volume offers a bold new approach for understanding Haitian histories and imagining Haitian futures.

What does our sophisticated, technically advanced society have to learn from a venerable African goddess? That is the question Dr. Diedre Badejo set out to answer a decade ago, armed only with a tape recorder, a working knowledge of Yoruba language, literature, and culture, and a mental "image" of the African Motherland molded as much by her great grandmother's character as by her own experience of the Black Power and Black Studies movements of the '60s and '70s. The answers Dr. Badejo found as she immersed herself in the ritual orature, sacred songs, and festival drama of the Yoruba goddess Osun Seegesi at the deity's principal shrine in the city of Osogbo, Nigeria, are shared with the world in this detailed documentary/analysis that presents a startling view of human relations and relationships that is powerful in its practicality and revolutionary in its civility. What Osun (pronounced "Oh-Shoon") offers to a civilization standing "at the crossroads" and poised on the "abyss of transition", says the author, is nothing less than "an African feminist theory that challenges the hegemony of the Western social order" with a holistic sociocultural vision that recognizes and affirms the reciprocal role of women and men in building and sustaining a truly civil society.

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.

This book critically examines the intersection of religion, public health and human security in Nigeria. Focusing on Christianity, Islam, traditional religions and "intra-religious" doctrinal divergencies, the book explores the impact faith has on health-related decisions and how this affects security in Nigeria. The book assesses the connection between religion and five contemporary major health and medical issues in the country. This includes the issue of epidemics and pandemics such as the Covid-19 pandemic, vaccines, contraception, blood transfusion and the controversies associated with "miracle healing". In particular, this book explores situations where individuals have the power of choice but instead embraces faith and religious positions that contradict science in the management of their health and, in the process, expose themselves and others to personal health insecurity. It investigates aspects of human security including the wider international ramifications of health issues, approaches to cures and the interpretation of causes of diseases, as well as the ethno-religious connotations of such interpretations. Exploring key issues that have brought religion into the politics of health and human security in Nigeria, this book will be of interest to students and scholars in the field of African Religion, African Politics, African Studies, public health, security, and Sociology.

This project is an attempt to bring together the many fragments of history concerning the Yoruba religious community and their rise to prominence in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, from the mid-nineteenth to the late-twentieth centuries.

Finalist for the 2014 Albert J. Raboteau Prize for the Best Book in Africana Religions presented by the Journal of Africana Religions This is the first collection of essays to analyze intersectional religious and cultural practices surrounding the deity Yemoja. In Afro-Atlantic traditions, Yemoja is associated with motherhood, women, the arts, and the family. This book reveals how Yemoja traditions are negotiating gender, sexuality, and cultural identities in bold ways that emphasize the shifting beliefs and cultural practices of contemporary times. Contributors come from a wide range of fields—religious studies, art history, literature, and anthropology—and focus on the central concern of how different religious communities explore issues of race, gender, and sexuality through religious practice and discourse. The volume adds the voices of religious practitioners and artists to those of scholars to engage in conversations about how Latino/a and African diaspora religions respond creatively to a history of colonization.