Oshun's Daughters

Vanessa K. Valdés

Description

Finalist for the 2015 Albert J. Raboteau Prize for the Best Book in Africana Religions presented by the Journal of Africana Religions

Oshun's Daughters examines representations of African diasporic religions from novels and poems written by women in the United States, the Spanish Caribbean, and Brazil. In spite of differences in age, language, and nationality, these women writers all turn to variations of traditional Yoruba religion (Santería/Regla de Ocha and Candomblé) as a source of inspiration for creating portraits of womanhood. Within these religious systems, binaries that dominate European thought—man/woman, mind/body, light/dark, good/evil—do not function in the same way, as the emphasis is not on extremes but on balancing or reconciling these radical differences. Involvement with these African diasporic religions thus provides alternative models of womanhood that differ substantially from those found in dominant Western patriarchal culture, namely, that of virgin, asexual wife/mother, and whore. Instead we find images of the sexual woman, who enjoys her body without any sense of shame; the mother, who nurtures her children without sacrificing herself; and the warrior woman, who actively resists demands that she conform to one-dimensional stereotypes of womanhood.
Acknowledgments

Introduction
The Call: Hearing the Flow of the River

1. Diasporic Revelation: Audre Lorde, Sandra María Esteves, and Ntozake Shange

2. The Search for Home: Cristina García and Loida Maritza Pérez

3. Love, Revolution, Survival: Nancy Morejó;n and Daína Chaviano

4. Sacrifice and Salvation: Helena Parente Cunha, Sônia Fátima da Conceição Evaristo

Conclusion
The Response: Reflections in the Mirror

Notes
Works Cited
Index

Sujets

• Latin American
• Ethnic studies
• Indigenous peoples
• Latin America
• Caribbean
• Cultures

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 05 décembre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9781438450445
• Langue: English

Extrait

OSHUN’S DAUGHTERS
OSHUN’S DAUGHTERS
The Search for WOMANHOOD in the AMERICAS
VANESSA K. VALDÉS
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2014 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu Production by Ryan Morris Marketing by Anne M. Valentine.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Valdés, Vanessa Kimberly.
Oshun’s daughters : the search for womanhood in the Americas / Vanessa K. Valdés.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-5043-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Women and literature— America. 2. Yoruba (African people) in literature. 3. African diaspora. 4. Women in literature. 5. Cuban literature—Women authors—History and criticism. 6. Brazilian literature—Women authors—History and criticism. 7. Yoruba (African people)—Cuba. 8. Yoruba (African people)—Brazil. I. Title.
PN56.3.A45V35 2014
809’.89287097--dc23
2013017499
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This work is dedicated to Robert Valdes Jr., con todo mi cariño, and to Rose Donegan Bess (Miss Rose), without whose generosity of protective space and love this work would not have been produced
*
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction The Call: Hearing the Flow of the River
One Diasporic Revelation: Audre Lorde, Sandra María Esteves, and Ntozake Shange
Two The Search for Home: Cristina García and Loida Maritza Pérez
Three Love, Revolution, Survival: Nancy Morejón and Daína Chaviano
Four Sacrifice and Salvation: Helena Parente Cunha, Sônia Fátima da Conceição, and Conceição Evaristo
Conclusion The Response: Reflections in the Mirror
Notes
Works Cited
Index
*
Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I thank God for all of His blessings, for His angels and spirit guides. I thank my ancestors who accompany me on this journey, and the orishas, for providing me with their guidance, love, and support. I thank my parents, Robert Valdes Jr. and Iris Delia Colón Valdes, for their love and support. I thank my godmother, mi madrina, minha mãe-de-santo, my best friend Gina Bonilla, without whose love, generosity, and guidance this truly would not have been possible. I thank Leroy Martin Bess for his love and generosity; Mercedes Emilia Robles for her nourishment; and Marty, my godfather Martin Skolnick, for always being there. Thank you to the friends I’ve made over the years, for your kindness, laughter, and love.
I thank the staff of the State University of New York Press, especially my acquisitions editor, Beth Bouloukos, who gave unparalleled support for this project. I thank the anonymous readers whose comments prompted me to strengthen the manuscript by reconsidering the impact of the historical moment on all of these writers. Thank you to production editor Ryan Morris and copy editor Alan V. Hewat, for all of your work in making this book what it is. Thank you also to Philip Pascuzzo for a beautiful cover.
I have had the honor of spending seven years as an assistant professor at The City College of New York, the flagship school of the City University of New York system. I thank my students, past and present, who have allowed me to live my dream as an educator, and I thank my colleagues for their support throughout the years, especially Geraldine Murphy, Harriet Alonso, Richard Calichman, Silvia Burunat, Dulce García, Bettina Lerner, Corinna Messina-Kosciuba, and Regina Castro McGowan. Also, I would be remiss if I did not mention CUNY’s Future Faculty Preparation Program, and my cohort of Spring 2010 specifically, led by Shelly Eversley: Maria Bellamy, Jason Frydman, Amy Moorman Robbins, Jody Rosen and Charity Scribner. Thank you for your insight.
The seeds of this book were planted long before I can remember: I would read poems and novels and recognize passing references to these religious traditions without any understanding or depth of knowledge. Years later, as a graduate student, Earl E. Fitz recommended that I read Helena Parente Cunha’s A Mulher no Espelho : it is the only research that survives from my dissertation, as the rest was left behind to make room for this new project. I thank him for introducing me to this text, as well as for his initial words of encouragement oh so long ago. I thank his colleagues at Vanderbilt University’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese, especially William Luis, Benigno Trigo, Cathy L. Jrade, Emanuelle Oliveira, and Marshall Eakin of the Department of History, for their faith in me. William deserves special mention for seeing the potential in me as an undergraduate at Yale and for encouraging me to pursue my studies on the graduate level at Vanderbilt.
I thank the community of scholars examining the representations of these religions in literature, some of whom include Henry Louis Gates Jr., Julia Cuervo Hewitt, LaVinia Delois Jennings, Robert Farris Thompson, Theresa Washington, and Donna Aza Weir-Soley. The publication of their work meant the creation of space for mine.
An earlier version of chapter 4 was originally published as “The Voice of Oxum: Mulher no Espelho (1983),” in PALARA 13 (Fall 2009): 102–12. In addition, support for this project was provided by a PSC-CUNY Award, jointly funded by The Professional Staff Congress and The City University of New York.
INTRODUCTION
The Call
Hearing the Flow of the River
for we are all children of Eshu god of chance and the unpredictable and we each wear many changes inside of our skin.
—Audre Lorde, “Between Ourselves”
Oshun’s Daughters: The Search for Womanhood in the Americas examines the ways in which the inclusion of African diasporic religious practices serves as a transgressive tool in narrative discourses in the Americas. This study analyzes several representative novels and poems in an effort to understand contemporary representations of womanhood in the United States, Cuba, and Brazil. All of these works prominently feature protagonists who engage with variations of traditional Yoruba religion, an alternate religious system that survived the African slave trade and is often marginalized in the Americas. Blended with Catholicism in the New World, it is known as Regla de Ocha, Lucumí, or Santería 1 in the Spanish Caribbean and the United States, and Candomblé Nagô in Brazil.
There are a number of religions that were transported to the Western Hemisphere during the four centuries of the Middle Passage. These include, but are not limited to: Vodou, the religion of the Fon people of Dahomey, now Benin, transported to Haiti; Regla de Palo Monte Mayombe, an umbrella term for the Afro-Cuban religions that derive from the Kongo religion of the Bakongo people; Obeah, the creolized practices derived from the traditional religions of the Ashanti, practiced in the British West Indies; Quimbois, the Obeah -related practice found in Martinique and Guadeloupe; and Umbanda and Macumba, creolized practices that combine Candomblé with Spiritism in Brazil. This study focuses on the representation of spiritual systems practiced by the largest group to arrive in the Spanish Caribbean and Brazil, the Yoruba ( los yoruba in Spanish, iorubá or nagô in Brazilian Portuguese). This religious system, like many African spiritual practices, offers a different epistemology than that of what has been identified as European rationalism; this system of knowledge is more holistic in that it places importance on both the physical and metaphysical. There is no difference between the sacred and the secular within this system of thought, given that everything is imbued with the spirit of God. Binaries that dominate European thought (man/woman; mind/body; light/dark; good/evil) do not function in the same way within these religious systems, as the emphasis is not on extremes but on balancing these radical differences, on reconciling them.
Involvement with these African diasporic religions therefore provides alternative models of womanhood that differ substantially from those found in dominant Western patriarchal culture, namely, that of virgin, asexual wife/mother, and whore. Within traditional Yoruba religion and their syncretized variations found in the Western Hemisphere, we find images of the sexual woman, who enjoys her body without any sense of shame; the mother who nurtures her children without sacrificing herself; the warrior woman who actively resists demands that she conform to one-dimensional stereotypes of womanhood. In spite of differences in age, language, and nationality, all of the writers in this study are engaged in a project that spans the entirety of the Americas: they all turn to these diasporic religions as a source of inspiration for creating more full portraits of womanhood.
In her recent study Yoruba Traditions and African American Religious Nationalism (2012), Tracey Hucks notes: “The ways African Americans in North America and other global practitioners of Afro-Atlantic Yoruba religions create meaning is extremely diverse. Therefore, studies of the various groups (even intragroups) must always