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Cover image of Women and Religion in the African Diaspora
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Women and Religion in the African Diaspora

Knowledge, Power, and Performance

edited by R. Marie Griffith and Barbara Dianne Savage

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This landmark collection of newly commissioned essays explores how diverse women of African descent have practiced religion as part of the work of their ordinary and sometimes extraordinary lives. By examining women from North America, the Caribbean, Brazil, and Africa, the contributors identify the patterns that emerge as women, religion, and diaspora intersect, mapping fresh approaches to this emergent field of inquiry.

The volume focuses on issues of history, tradition, and the authenticity of African-derived spiritual practices in a variety of contexts, including those where memories of...

This landmark collection of newly commissioned essays explores how diverse women of African descent have practiced religion as part of the work of their ordinary and sometimes extraordinary lives. By examining women from North America, the Caribbean, Brazil, and Africa, the contributors identify the patterns that emerge as women, religion, and diaspora intersect, mapping fresh approaches to this emergent field of inquiry.

The volume focuses on issues of history, tradition, and the authenticity of African-derived spiritual practices in a variety of contexts, including those where memories of suffering remain fresh and powerful. The contributors discuss matters of power and leadership and of religious expressions outside of institutional settings. The essays study women of Christian denominations, African and Afro-Caribbean traditions, and Islam, addressing their roles as spiritual leaders, artists and musicians, preachers, and participants in bible-study groups.

This volume's transnational mixture, along with its use of creative analytical approaches, challenges existing paradigms and summons new models for studying women, religions, and diasporic shiftings across time and space.

Reviews

Reviews

An excellent resource for students in religious studies and scholars of the various religious movements examined.

Women and Religion in the African Diaspora both preserves and lovingly encompasses a multiplicity of black women's religious experiences.

This book is truly groundbreaking. Future scholars will view it as a pioneering effort to develop an interdisciplinary, transnational approach to understanding women and religion. Griffith and Savage have assembled a talented group of scholars to herald the creation of a new field within the study of women and religion.

This monumental text is the definitive examination of the rich and complex doings and sufferings of religious women of African descent. It brings together the most sophisticated thinkers—with diverse methodologies and perspectives—on the crucial reflections and lived experiences of Black religious women.

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Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
400
ISBN
9780801883705
Illustration Description
13 halftones, 1 line drawing
Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: Diasporic Knowledge
Chapter 1. É a Senzala: Slavery, Women, and Embodied Knowledge in Afro-Brazilian Candomblé
Chapter 2. "I Smoothed the Way, I Opened Doors": Women

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: Diasporic Knowledge
Chapter 1. É a Senzala: Slavery, Women, and Embodied Knowledge in Afro-Brazilian Candomblé
Chapter 2. "I Smoothed the Way, I Opened Doors": Women in the Yoruba-Orisha Tradition of Trinidad
Chapter 3. Joining the African Diaspora: Migration and Diasporic Religious Culture among the Garífuna in Honduras and New York
Chapter 4. Women of the African Diaspora Within: The Masowe Apostles, an African Initiated Church
Chapter 5. "Power in the Blood": Menstrual Taboos and Women's Power in an African Instituted Church
Part II: Power, Authority, and Subversion
Chapter 6. "The Spirit of the Holy Ghost is a Male Spirit": African American Preaching Women and the Paradoxes of Gender
Chapter 7. "Make Us a Power": African American Methodists Debate the "Woman Question," 1870–1900
Chapter 8. "Only a Woman Would Do": Bible Reading and African American Women's Organizing Work
Chapter 9. Exploring the Religious Connection: Black Women Community Workers, Religious Agency, and the Force of Faith
Part III: Performing Religion
Chapter 10. The Arts of Loving
Chapter 11. "Truths that Liberate the Soul": Eva Jessye and the Politics of Religious Performance
Chapter 12. Shopping with Sister Zubayda: African American Sunni Muslim Rituals of Consumption and Belonging
Chapter 13. "But, It's Bible": African American Women and Television Preachers
Notes
About the Contributors
Index

Author Bios
Featured Contributor

R. Marie Griffith

R. Marie Griffith is a professor of religion at Princeton University. She is the author or coeditor of several books, including Women and Religion in the African Diaspora: Knowledge, Power, and Performance, also published by Johns Hopkins.
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