Dream Singers

Anthony Shafton

Description

Advance Praise for Dream-Singers

"You will find a great storehouse of folk and literary treasures in this ambitious book that speaks to anyone who has ever thought about his or her dreams. It's a wonderful adventure and I highly recommend it."-Clarence Major, author of Configurations and Juba to Jive

Acclaim for Dream Reader
also by Anthony Shafton

"A book so unique in its combination of scholarship, clarity, and down-to-earth feeling about dreams that I find it hard to fully express the excitement and satisfaction I felt on reading it."-Montague Ullman, M.D., Clinical Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Author of Working with Dreams and Dream Telepathy

"Breathtaking . . . the single most complete and thorough analysis of contemporary dream theories yet written . . . Shafton has a keen sense for what people most want to know about dreams, and an admirable ability to explain difficult concepts without oversimplifying them."-Kelly Bulkeley, Ph.D., Past President, The Association for the Study of Dreams, Author of The Wilderness of Dreams
Acknowledgments.

PART ONE: A REVERENCE FOR DREAMS.

1. Through the Porthole of Dreams.

PART TWO: THE AFRICAN CONNECTION.

2. Dream Is What We Do: Influences from Africa.

PART THREE: THE FABRIC OF THE DREAM HERITAGE.

3. Grandmother Will Come: Ancestor Visitation Dreams.

4. That Bolt of Lightning: Predictive Dreams.

5. We Got the Signs: Signs in Dreams.

6. Blackonomics: Playing the Numbers from Dreams.

7. I Knew You Were Gonna Say That: Deja Vu and Predictive Dreams.

8. The Underbeat: Dreaming and Other States of Consciousness.

9. Didn't Bother Me None: Experiences at the Edge of Dreaming.

10. Take Me Through: Dreams and Dreamlike States in Religion.

11. All Life Passes Through Water: Dreams in Hoodoo.

12. Little Stirrups: Witches Riding You and Sleep Paralysis.

PART FOUR: DREAMS ABOUT RACE.

13. The Same Old Nightmare: Race in Dreams.

PART FIVE: DREAM SHARING AND THE FUTURE.

14. What My Mother Does: Dream Sharing and the Future.

Appendix A: Index of Interviewees.

Appendix B: Traditional African American Dream Signs.

Appendix C: Technical Details about Policy and Numbers Gambling.

Appendix D: Dream Books for Policy and Numbers Consulted for Chapter 6.

Appendix E: Dream Book Authors and Publishers.

Notes.

References.

Index.

Sujets

• Vie de famille
• Relations familiales
• Famille
• Self-help
• Dreams

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 08 mars 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780470653340
• Langue: English

Extrait

DREAM-SINGERS
The African American Way with Dreams
ANTHONY SHAFTON

John Wiley Sons, Inc.
Copyright 2002 by Anthony Shafton. All rights reserved Published by John Wiley Sons, Inc., New York
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I had some dreams when I was the age of fifteen or sixteen. I remember a dream so vividly, so clear. And I tell people about it. I had this dream of a procession of people, walking in a funerallike procession, playing music. And bright colors! Very darkskinned. And the sun, of course. Intense, bright colors. Almost like a Romare Bearden or Douglas Johnson painting, of the Harlem Renaissance period, just like that. No features or anything. And John Coltrane the saxophone player was at the head of the procession. And he played in a kind of free style, but very emotional! I mean, the horn was like a voice. And that s all. That s all it was. But I could never forget how beautiful! Sunlit! Southernish. Africanish. And the horn. Bright colors. And the skin colors. It was like a painting that came alive .
-Preston Jackson
Dream-singers all,- My people .
-Langston Hughes, Laughters
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
PART ONE
A REVERENCE FOR DREAMS
1 Through the Porthole of Dreams
PART TWO
THE AFRICAN CONNECTION
2 Dream Is What We Do: Influences from Africa
PART THREE
THE FABRIC OF THE DREAM HERITAGE
3 Grandmother Will Come: Ancestor Visitation Dreams
4 That Bolt of Lightning: Predictive Dreams
5 We Got the Signs: Signs in Dreams
6 Blackonomics: Playing the Numbers from Dreams
7 I Knew You Were Gonna Say That: D j Vu and Predictive Dreams
8 The Underbeat: Dreaming and Other States of Consciousness
9 Didn t Bother Me None: Experiences at the Edge of Dreaming
10 Take Me Through: Dreams and Dreamlike States in Religion
11 All Life Passes Through Water: Dreams in Hoodoo
12 Little Stirrups: Witches Riding You and Sleep Paralysis
PART FOUR
DREAMS ABOUT RACE
13 The Same Old Nightmare: Race in Dreams
PART FIVE
DREAM SHARING AND THE FUTURE
14 What My Mother Does: Dream Sharing and the Future
Appendix A
Index of Interviewees
Appendix B
Traditional African American Dream Signs
Appendix C
Technical Details about Policy and Numbers Gambling
Appendix D
Dream Books for Policy and Numbers Consulted for Chapter 6
Appendix E
Dream Book Authors and Publishers
Notes
References
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In 1990, I interviewed a number of African American psychologists for an article, my first venture into the subject of this book. For the insights I gained from those interviews, which still shape my thinking, I thank Faheem C. Ashanti, William M. Banks, Carole Ione Bovoso, Edward Bruce Bynum, Loma Flowers, Gerald G. Jackson, and William D. Pierce. One psychologist, Charles Payne, later agreed to a personal interview about his own dream life for this book.
I have also profited from exchanges with medical anthropologist Loudell F. Snow, folklorists Michael Edward Bell and Carolyn M. Long, multiculturalist Michael Vannoy Adams, and dream psychologists Rosalind Cartwright, Art T. Funkhouser, Russell Gruber, and Jane White-Lewis.
The statistical analysis of the interviews is the work of Elliot Krop, who took the data I gave him and extracted statistical sense from it.
Michael Vannoy Adams, Thomas Cottle, Henry Louis Gates Jr., John Kirsch, Annamarie Poplawska, and Mado Spiegler agreed to read all or part of the manuscript at various stages and made valuable suggestions.
Two friends who are veterans in the publishing trenches, Lois Battle and Thomas Cottle, gave me important advice and kept my spirits up. Another friend and writer, Mary Lewis, shared information that led me to John Wiley Sons. My editor there, Carole Hall, expertly set me on the right course to make revisions. I m grateful to all these people, and in particular to Carole Hall for valuing this project.
I thank the many people who helped me as I went about arranging interviews. But above all, I thank all my interviewees. They are the heart and soul of this book. Some of the interviewees also assisted me by putting me in touch with others to interview. To single out a few, the late Marion Stamps gave me my very first interview, and later enabled me to meet with eight children as a group. Achim Rodgers was indispensable as the facilitator of my questionnaire survey of black male prisoners. And Angela Jackson and John Edgar Wideman not only guided me to other interviews, but inspired me.
PART ONE
A Reverence for Dreams
1
THROUGH THE PORTHOLE OF DREAMS
Dreams, my mama taught me, do not lie .
-Shay Youngblood
The poetry and power of dreams have attracted me since childhood. Like many people, I ve always known by intuition that dreams have meanings that matter. But when I was already in my forties, a spell of particularly intense and suggestive dreams riveted my attention. I felt then that I had to learn how dreams work and what they mean.
I began going to workshops on dream interpretation. I joined groups that meet to share and discuss their dreams. I attended conferences with presentations by experts who ran the gamut from laboratory investigators to lifestyle gurus. I studied hundreds of research papers and shelves of scholarly and popular books. A preoccupation became an occupation, and eventually I turned out a book of my own, a survey of contemporary approaches to the understanding of dreams that was published in the mid-1990s.
The seed of this present book, about African Americans and dreams, was planted at the first major conference I attended. This was my first look at the collection of individuals who make dreams a career in America. And it disturbed me to see next to no black faces. I questioned the conference organizers, who told me they were also disturbed but didn t know how to recruit more black members to their organization.
The fact is, there are scarcely any African Americans among the researchers, instructors, and authors in this field. Very few blacks attend their conferences and workshops. And blacks are poorly represented among the dreamers they write about.
What, I wondered, would black psychologists say about this profile. Those I sought out recognized the situation I described to them. None blamed racism. Instead, they found the cause in black preferences. In brief, they explained that black psychologists-in-training would view dreams as a fringe field and a poor career choice. And blacks in general might perceive some of the approaches to dreams being offered as too narrowly psychological, other approaches as too New Age, too feel-good spiritual. Black culture, they emphasized, has its own lively traditions about dreams.
This drew my interest. The psychologists sketched some of these traditions as we talked, but could direct me to few books or articles. For as I soon confirmed at the library, hardly any studies have been devoted to the dreams of black Americans.
Around this time I happened to hear about the dream of a community activist named Marion Stamps in Chicago where I then lived. Her dream, which I ll describe in chapter 2, had inspired her to take a certain action to reduce gang violence. Because I had an interest in the social relevance of dreams, and because she was black, I thought I d try to interview her. She agreed, and thus I received my first real exposure to the richness of African American beliefs and attitudes surrounding dreams. Her eloquence on the subject and her forth-comingness encouraged me to undertake this study.
Eventually I interviewed 116 African Americans. In selecting people to approach for interviews, I sought a cross section by age, occupation, and so on, while at the same time keeping an eye out for those who might be eloquent on the subject of dreams. Some of the most eloquent turned out to be ordinary folk, but I did end up with a disproportionate number of people in the arts. This appears not to have caused a bias in the sample, however. With very few exceptions, the essential characteristics of the dream experiences and beliefs of artists and nonartists were the same.
In addition to interviewing this group, I also interviewed eight youngsters at Chicago s Cabrini Green housing project, and I obtained written answers to questionnaires I submitted to twenty-five African American male prison inmates around the country.
There s a question I m often asked by whites when I say I ve done this study. How did you get your material? they inquire with puzzlement. What they mean is, How did you ever manage to come in contact with enough blacks? This question naively reflects the racial separateness of most white lives in America. But I m h