Description
Book SynopsisRecovering the African Feminine Divine in Literature, the Arts, and Practice: Yemonja Awakening provides context to the myriad ways in which the African feminine divine is being reclaimed by scholars, practitioners, and cultural scholars worldwide. This volume addresses the complex ways in which the reclamation of and recognition of Yemonja, the African female deity who is the mother of the entire world of the Orisha, facilitates cultural survival and the formation of African-centric identity. Also known as Yemaya, Iemanya and Yemaya-Olokun, Yemonja is the deity whose province is the ocean and, given that the Middle Passage was the cultural and spatial crossroad to Africa’s numerous diasporas, this deity links the shared histories of African and African descent cultural praxis worldwide. This work provides the context for understanding how the spiritual conceptualizations of the African feminine divine underpin critical cultural forms, even when it has been previously unacknowledged and despite the cultural encounters with European and Western models of being. Scholars of African diaspora studies and the arts will find this book particularly interesting.
Table of ContentsTable of Contents
Introduction - Ifakayode Faniyi, Eric Bridges, Sheila Smith McKoy, and LaJuan Simpson-Wilkey
Yemonja: Definitions and Practice
Chapter 1 The Opulent Mother: A Brief Discussion of Yemonja and her Worship in Yorùbáland -Eric M. Bridges
Chapter 2 Yemonja and The Dark Waters of the Subconscious: Reflections on an Africana Archetype - Tarell Kyles
Chapter 3 Iyemonja, Omi Jori: Our Mother, Leader of the Waters - Iya Osundamisi Fafunke
Chapter 4 Yemonja Braidings in Obeah Practices in the Anglophone Caribbean - Sandra Gonsalves-Domond
Chapter 5 What does it mean to be a traditional priestess? Interrogating Women’s Engagement with the Divine - Grace Sintim Adasi
Yemonja: Literature, Media, Film
Chapter 6 Yemonja/Yemoja/Yemaya Rising: The Feminine Divine in Music, Fiction, and Media - Sheila Smith McKoy
Chapter 7 The Water of the Womb: The Unseen Power of Yemonja in James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk - Michael Lindsay
Chapter 8 Spirit, Passion and Sufferance: Articulations of Yemoja through Janie Crawford in Their Eyes Were Watching God and Velma Henry in The Salt Eaters - Khalilah Ali
Chapter 9 A Small Piece of Blue Fabric: Manifestations of Yemonja as a Site of Generational Healing in Phyllis Alesia Perry’s Stigmata - Griselda Thomas
Chapter 10 Glimpses of Yemaya from Literary and Cultural Foremothers - Leah Creque
