Diaspora Conversions Black Carib Religion and the Recovery of Africa [Paperback]

By joining a diaspora, a society may begin to change its religious, ethnic, and even racial identifications by rethinking its pasts. This pioneering multisite ethnography explores how this phenomenon is affecting the remarkable religion of the Garifuna, historically known as the Black Caribs, from the Central American coast of the Caribbean. It is estimated that one-third of the Garifuna have migrated to New York City over the past fifty years. Paul Christopher Johnson compares Garifuna spirit possession rituals performed in Honduran villages with those conducted in New York, and what emerges is a compelling picture of how the Garifuna engage ancestral spirits across multiple diasporic horizons. His study sheds new light on the ways diasporic religions around the world creatively plot itineraries of spatial memory that at once recover and remold their histories.

Paul Christopher Johnsonis Associate Professor in the Department of History and the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan, and author ofSecrets, Gossip and Gods: The Transformation of Brazilian Candombl?.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. What Is Diasporic Religion?
2. These Sons of Freedom: Black Caribs across Three Diasporic Horizons
3. Shamans at Work in the Villages
4. Shamans at Work in New York
5. Ritual in the Homeland; Or, Making the Land Home in Ritual
6. Ritual in the Bronx
7. Finding Africa in New York

Conclusion
Appendix. Trajectory of a Moving Object, the Caldero
Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
Index

I'm extremely impressed by Johnson's book.Diaspora Conversionsoffers an outstanding combination of theoretical acuity, erudition, and ethnographic prowess. It is bound to become highly influential in the study of religion in motion. Manuel A. Vasquez, co-author ofGlobalizing the Sacred: Religion Al3A