Description
Book SynopsisObeah, Orisa, and Religious Identity in Trinidad is an expansive two-volume examination of social imaginaries concerning Obeah and Yoruba-Orisa from colonialism to the present. Analyzing their entangled histories and systems of devotion, Tracey E. Hucks and Dianne M. Stewart articulate how these religions were criminalized during slavery and colonialism yet still demonstrated autonomous modes of expression and self-defense. In
Volume I, Obeah, Hucks traces the history of African religious repression in colonial Trinidad through the late nineteenth century. Drawing on sources ranging from colonial records, laws, and legal transcripts to travel diaries, literary fiction, and written correspondence, she documents the persecution and violent penalization of African religious practices encoded under the legal classification of “obeah.” A cult of antiblack fixation emerged as white settlers defined themselves in opposition to Obeah, which they imagined as terrifying
Trade Review"A powerful, original contribution to this emerging literature. . . . [T]hese two volumes will be of great interest to scholars working in Caribbean and African Diaspora Religions."
-- Alexander Rocklin * Nova Religio *
"On its own or in conjunction with its companionate volume II on Orisa,
Obeah, Orisa, & Religious Identity in Trinidad is a welcome and valuable contribution to Africana religious studies, Atlantic studies, and Caribbean historiography." -- Aisha Khan * Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology *
“A model of rigorous scholarship that offers a thoughtful and nuanced reflection on the dynamic constructions of African religion and identity in Trinidad from the colonial period to the present.”
-- Brendan Jamal Thornton * Journal of the American Academy of Religion *
Table of ContentsPreface ix
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction to Volume I 1
1. The Formation of a Slave Colony: Race, Nation, and Identity 13
2. Let Them Hate So Long as They Fear: Obeah Trials and Social Cannibalism in Trinidad’s Early Slave Society 52
3. Obeah, Piety, and Poison in
The Slave Son: Representations of African Religions in Trinidadian Colonial Literature 104
4. Marked in the Genuine African Way: Liberated Africans and Obeah Doctoring in Postslavery Trinidad 141
Afterword.
C’est Vrai—It Is True 203
Notes 209
Bibliography 241
Index 253
