Description
Book SynopsisExplores how, in the Americas, people of African birth or descent found spiritual and social empowerment in the orbit of the Church. Draws connections between Afro-Catholic festivals and their precedents in the early modern Christian kingdom of Kongo.
Trade Review“This multidisciplinary study of acculturation participates in a turn in postcolonial studies away from questions of the imposition of Christianity to black reinvention.”
—Victor Houliston Heythrop Journal
“A compelling collection of essays that map out the transplantation of Kongo and Central African Christian traditions in the Americas by exploring the crucial role African Christian festivals played in the Americas. This is a timely multidisciplinary text that invites readers to explore representation and performance expressed in ideas, music, and art deployed by Africans to assert the will to thrive in the context of domination and to forge a vibrant Christian presence and practice.”
—Elias Bongmba,author of The Dialectics of Transformation in Africa
“This remarkable set of essays and their accompanying images bring to life the dynamic interactions of central Africa and the Americas as expressed in music, dance, artistic representation, and spirituality. It does not resolve the great debate over African continuities versus creole creativity, but it enriches and enlivens it and makes it fundamental to an understanding of the Atlantic world.”
—Stuart B. Schwartz,author of All Can Be Saved: Religious Tolerance and Salvation in the Iberian Atlantic World
“[This volume] offers a much-needed contribution to the study of African, Afro-Latino/a and African-American Catholics. While the field of Black Atlantic religions has exploded in the past decade, the study of Black Atlantic Catholicism has been one of the most understudied areas in the field of religion.”
—Michelle A. Gonzalez Reading Religion
“The authors critically address the modes of disciplinary engagement that have dominated discussion and evaluation to date. These essays are useful references for understanding the renegotiation necessary for comprehending processes and celebrations that excavate meaning far below the surface and, in turn, provide valuable information on the legacy of Catholic religiosity that has been simmering for centuries on the African continent.”
—7/24/2020 Early American Literature
“By including festivals from New Orleans and Mexico City, and by framing the volume as in direct conversation with scholarship on African American art and culture in the United States, Fromont takes an important stride toward bridging the historiographical divide between scholarship on North and South America.”
—Ximena A. Gómez Art History
“The volume challenges some established theories about the origins of Afro-diasporic cultural traditions, which many will welcome. This line of research has led to important and lasting insights.”
—Patricia Barker Lerch Nova Religio
“Readers seeking a historical introduction to the public expression of Afro-Catholic cultures in the African Diaspora or an inspiration for methods to carry the historical study of Black Atlantic religions forward will find Afro-Catholic Festivals in the Americas an essential text that fulfills both purposes.”
—Ras Michael Brown International Journal of African Historical Studies
“An amazing collection of essays about the traces of Kongolese Catholicism in the New World, focusing on festivals in particular. It is a great extension of the work by prior scholars of Kongolese Catholicism.”
—Adam Mohr African Studies Review
“Through attention to the subjectivity and cultural specificity of texts, translations, and images, and, crucially, to ‘embodied social memory’ that decenters the written record, the volume presents a complex and vital tale of American Christianity rooted in central Africa while underscoring trans-generational Black agency in the unfolding of festive traditions within the post-Columbian Americas.”
—Adrienne Rooney Religious Studies Review
Table of ContentsContents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Kongo Christianity, Festive Performances, and the Making of Black Atlantic Tradition
Cécile Fromont and Michael Iyanaga
Part 1 Ritual Battles from the Kongo Kingdom to the Americas
1. Sangamentos on Congo Square? Kongolese Warriors, Brotherhood Kings, and Mardi Gras Indians in New Orleans
Jeroen Dewulf
2. Moros e Christianos Ritualized Naval Battles: Baptizing American Waters with African Spiritual Meaning
Kevin Dawson
3. A Mexican Sangamento? The First Afro-Christian Performance in the Americas
Miguel A. Valerio
Part 2 America’s Black Kings and Diplomatic Representation
4. Representing an African King in Brazil
Lisa Voigt
5. Black Ceremonies in Perspective: Brazil and Dahomey in the Eighteenth Century
Junia Ferreira Furtado
Part 3 Reconsidering Primary Sources
6. Envisioning Brazil’s Afro-Christian Congados: The Black King and Queen Festival Lithograph of Johann Moritz Rugendas
Cécile Fromont
7. The Orisa House That Afro-Catholics Built: Africana Antecedents to Yoruba Religious Formation in Trinidad
Dianne M. Stewart
Part 4 Aurality and Diasporic Traditions
8. On Hearing Africas in the Americas: Domestic Celebrations for Catholic Saints as Afro-Diasporic Religious Tradition
Michael Iyanaga
List of Contributors
Index
