Description
Book SynopsisFadeke Castor explores the roles African religious practice play in the formation of social and political identities play in post-independence Trinidad and Tobago, showing how Ifá/Orisha practitioners build and perceive a sense of diasporic belonging that leads them to work toward black liberation and a decolonial future.
Trade Review"The author deftly describes the ritual practices of African-based religions in the African diaspora and highlights the role of international conferences in the formation of religious identity. Additionally, she successfully relates the contemporary Orisa movement in Trinidad to the 1970s Trinidad black power movement. . . . Castor does an outstanding job of portraying the flow of ritual and ritual performance. Highly recommended." -- S. D. Glazier * Choice *
"
Spiritual Citizenship is an important text. . . . An essential teaching text on questions of multiculturalism, citizenship, race, and religion. Its engaging writing style on these timely issues and its focus on the under-studied (but fascinating) religious context of Trinidad make
Spiritual Citizenship a must-read." -- J. Brent Crosson * Reading Religion *
"
Spiritual Citizenship is a groundbreaking ethnography. . . . With vivid, engaging and descriptive writing, Castor examines how Ifá/Orisha religious communities that were for decades persecuted and maligned have been re-evaluated in the context of the Black Power Movement in Trinidad—later defined as integral to the pluralistic and multicultural nation and simultaneously incorporated into transnational spiritual networks of priests and practitioners." -- Yolanda D. Covington-Ward * Transforming Anthropology *
"
Spiritual Citizenship makes an important ethnographic contribution to Caribbean anthropology and Afro-Atlantic history. . . . This study is notable for the unique and timely ethnographic contributions it makes." -- Keith E. McNeal * Journal of Anthropological Research *
"What this book does best is to show how competing transnational and national dynamics offer multiple possibilities for religious authority and achievement, and how these possibilities generate friction. . . . Given how well Castor writes herself and her processes of learning and initiation into the ethnography, the book offers insights on transforming returns at multiple levels." -- Paul Johnson * Anthropos *
Table of ContentsNote on Orthography ix
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xvii
Introduction 1
Part I. Spiritual Engagements with Black Cultural Citizenship
1. The Spirit of Black Power: An Ancestral Calling 25
2. Multicultural Moments: From Margins to Mainstream 54
Part II. Emerging Spiritual Citizenship
3. Around the Bend: Festive Practices in a Yorùbá-Centric Shrine 71
4. Trini Travels: Spiritual Citizenship as Transnational 99
5. Ifá in Trinidad's Ground 128
Appendixes I-III 169
Notes 179
Glossary 191
References 197
Index 221
