In Haiti, Papa Legba is the spirit whose permission must be sought to communicate with the spirit world. He stands at and for the crossroads of language, interpretation, and form and is considered to be like the voice of a god. InLegba’s Crossing, Heather Russell examines how writers from the United States and the anglophone Caribbean challenge conventional Western narratives through innovative use, disruption, and reconfiguration of form. Russell’s in-depth analysis of the work of James Weldon Johnson, Audre Lorde, Michelle Cliff, Earl Lovelace, and John Edgar Wideman is framed in light of the West African aesthetic principle ofàshe, a quality ascribed to art that transcends the prescribed boundaries of form.Àsheis linked to the characteristics of improvisation and flexibility that are central to jazz and other art forms. Russell argues that African Atlantic writers self-consciously and self-reflexively manipulate dominant forms that prescribe a certain trajectory of, for example, enlightenment, civilization, or progress. She connects this seemingly postmodern meta-analysis to much older West African philosophy and its African Atlantic iterations, which she calls “the Legba Principle.”

The Black Speculative Arts Movement: Black Futurity, Art+Design is a 21st century statement on the intersection of the future of African people with art, culture, technology, and politics. This collection enters the global debate on the emerging field of Afrofuturism studies with an international array of scholars and artists contributing to the discussion of Black futurity in the 21st century. The contributors analyze and respond to the invisibility or mischaracterization of Black people in the popular imagination, in science fiction, and in philosophies of history.

James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) exemplified the ideal of the American public intellectual as a writer, educator, songwriter, diplomat, key figure of the Harlem Renaissance, and first African American executive of the NAACP. Originally published anonymously in 1912, Johnson’s novel The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man is considered one of the foundational works of twentieth-century African American literature, and its themes and forms have been taken up by other writers, from Ralph Ellison to Teju Cole. Johnson’s novel provocatively engages with political and cultural strains still prevalent in American discourse today, and it remains in print over a century after its initial publication. New Perspectives contains fresh essays that analyze the book’s reverberations, the contexts within which it was created and received, the aesthetic and intellectual developments of its author, and its continuing influence on American literature and global culture. Contributors: Bruce Barnhart, Lori Brooks, Ben Glaser, Jeff Karem, Daphne Lamothe, Noelle Morrissette, Michael Nowlin, Lawrence J. Oliver, Diana Paulin, Amritjit Singh, Robert B. Stepto

This compelling reference work introduces the religions of Voodoo, a onetime faith of the Mississippi River Valley, and Vodou, a Haitian faith with millions of adherents today. Unlike its fictional depiction in zombie films and popular culture, Voodoo is a full-fledged religion with a pantheon of deities, a priesthood, and communities of believers. Drawing from the expertise of contemporary practitioners, this encyclopedia presents the history, culture, and religion of Haitian Vodou and Mississippi Valley Voodoo. Though based primarily in these two regions, the reference looks at Voodoo across several cultures and delves into related religions, including African Vodu, African Diasporic Religions, and magical practices like hoodoo. Through roughly 150 alphabetical entries, the work describes various aspects of Voodoo in Louisiana and Haiti, covering topics such as important places, traditions, rituals, and items used in ceremonies. Contributions from scholars in the field provide a comprehensive overview of the subject from various perspectives and address the deities and ceremonial acts. The book features an extensive collection of primary sources and a selected, general bibliography of print and electronic resources.

It is 1994 and New Orleans is the Murder Capitol of the United States. It is late summer, and the air is heavy with humidity, perfume, and portent. The 82nd Airborne awaits orders to once again liberate Haiti from a CIA-trained cadre, this time those who ousted Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the democratically elected President of the country. A young Haitian-trained Voodou priestess, Taya DuChamps is murdered in New Orleans. Her Catholic teenaged daughter Layla is unexpectedly abducted to Haiti. Amidst this escalating chaos, Taya’s family and friends must put aside their personal grief and prejudices to attempt to rescue Layla before the entire country succumbs to anarchy. Set against the magical and dangerous backdrops of the most interesting of Caribbean nations and the most Caribbean city in the United States, Papa Legba’s Steadfast Daughter is an inquiry into what constitutes belief and how women have managed to survive against incredible odds.

This collection introduces readers to the history and practice of the Vodou religion, and corrects many misconceptions. The book focuses specifically on the role Vodou plays in Haiti, where it has its strongest following, examining its influence on spiritual beliefs, cultural practices, national identity, popular culture, writing and art.

At school in the late 1960s a Ghanaian fellow pupil brought to Richard Laister's attention the historic links between the West Indies, West Africa, the Atlantic slave trade, and the Voodoo religion. Forty years later, the author slipped away to explore these historic connections. In this book he describes a series of extended journeys above the coast of the Gulf of Guinea, focussing on Voodoo as a lens through which to observe the traditional ways of life still practised in this part of the world. Ghana, Togo, Burkino Faso and Benin remain, so he discovers, hardly touched by Western tourism and the cultural steamroller of globalisation. Arriving in Accra, Richard is welcomed by a retired colonel of the Ghanaian army, who is the first of several West Africans he meets to lament the passing of colonial rule. The Colonel provides a rare opportunity to attend a Voodoo funeral, where the corpse, dressed as a bride, is seated upon a throne to receive her guests. Here the author first discovers, Legba, god of entrances, crossroads, mirrors, and sunlight - a divine messenger, trickster, and Janus-faced herald of joy and terror. The funeral is a prelude to a series of adventures, in which comical and macabre incidents combine to form a unique West African mix. In every village the author finds sacrificial altars dedicated to Legba, who emerges as a universal object of veneration. From Ghana, Richard busses north to Ouagadougou, and then to Benin, heartland of Voodoo, where he receives a blessing from a powerful sorcerer. He survives a riot in Lome, Togo, in which there are many casualties, only to visit the President of the Republic's palace - a mysterious mock French chateau, whose owner has not crossed its portal for 20 years due to a curse. The author's odyssey through West Africa leads him to question rational interpretations of reality, reminding us of Scipio Africanus who more than 2,000 years ago declared, 'Out of Africa, always something strange emerges!'

Entangled Otherness explores the dynamics of cross-dressing and gender performance in contemporary Francophone Caribbean cultures. Through examination of archival texts, artistic works and oral histories the author reveals how strategies of crossing, mimicry and masquerade have enabled resistance to the racialised, gendered and patriarchal classifications of bodies that characterized Enlightenment thought during the French transatlantic slave trade.