A Fairytale for grownups, here, Oshun, the Yoruba Goddess of Love, gives cosmetics queen Alix Morton a gift that can rock the industry. Here, mere mortals meet up with Oshun and her fellow deities - Eleggua, Chango and Oya - and, African magic mixes with the fast-paced world of fashion, glamour and image making.

Umbanda is a religion that flourishes in diversity and the beauty of plurality. It embraces religious syncretism as one of its fundamental principles, blending Christianity, African traditions, and Indigenous and spiritualist beliefs into a sacred harmony. The Christian God, the Creator, and Jesus Christ as the spiritual guide are revered, alongside the African Orixás, powerful ancestral entities that represent the forces of nature and life. The connection with ancestors, through spiritual communication, reinforces Umbanda’s deep bond with spirituality and the respect for those who came before us. In Umbanda, there is no room for prejudice. Homosexuality is treated with the same respect and dignity as any other form of human existence. No distinctions are made based on color, race, gender, or sexual orientation. Everyone is welcomed in the temple, at the altar, and in the religious practice. Acceptance of diversity is an integral part of what makes Umbanda a universal and inclusive religion, a space where all can feel embraced and loved without exception. The practice of charity is one of Umbanda’s fundamental pillars. Helping others, whether through spiritual passes, guidance, or material acts, is the most genuine expression of love and compassion. Here, followers are not bound by rigid dogmas or an oppressive religious hierarchy. Umbanda offers spiritual freedom, allowing each person to find their own path within the faith, with an open heart and a mind ready for constant learning. Born in Brazil, Umbanda is deeply rooted in Brazilian culture, but its teachings and principles are universal. It respects all religions, understanding that each spiritual path has its own value and importance. Umbanda does not place itself above other traditions but coexists peacefully with all forms of belief, promoting dialogue and understanding between different expressions of faith. Additionally, Umbanda serves as a direct channel for communication with spirits. Through mediums, spiritual guides deliver messages of wisdom, healing, and love. This spiritual exchange strengthens the faith and the connection of practitioners with the invisible world, showing that life continues in another dimension and that spirits are always present, offering help and protection. This book is an invitation to explore and understand the richness of this Brazilian religion, which transcends borders, breaks down barriers, and teaches us the true meaning of tolerance, brotherhood, and universal faith. As you immerse yourself in these pages, may you feel the vibrant energy of Umbanda and discover a new spiritual horizon.

This genre falls under the category of Sci-fi fantasy thriller a works that is just as exciting as the adventures of Lora Croft in “Tomb Raiders” I chose this genre to create characters that exist outside of the everyday urban-scape theme. One of the main characters is a black woman; a seasoned sea captain for example. I wanted to create another kind of hero, in another part of the world, on another kind of mission based on another mindset; more of a West African theme influenced by the folklore of the ancient Yoruba of Southwestern Nigeria which is deeply submerged in cosmological and celestial influences and is viewed as individual characteristic energies expressing themselves universally in allegorical narratives. These legends tend to be older then Western civilization. I wanted the story to be unique and the characters just as unique. This is a story told by the ancestors of the war in heaven before the creation of man...this a story of the battle of illumination and darkness the fight to maintain balance between good and evil.

Oshun is the deity of river waters and is also seen as the embodiment of love and sexuality. She represents the joy of life and is, in many ways, what makes life worth living. Oshun is the patron of gold and all wealth is hers to give. She also rules marriage and is the giver of fertility. Her influence is gentle and loving and she teaches humanity that the secret of life is love.

Recovering the African Feminine Divine in Literature, the Arts, and Performing Arts: Yemonja Awakening provides context to the myriad ways in which the African feminine divine is being reclaimed by scholars, practitioners and cultural scholars worldwide. This volume addresses the complex ways in which the reclamation of and recognition of Yemonja facilitates cultural survival and the formation of African -centric identity. These cultural practices are symbolically represented by Yemonja, the African female deity who is the mother of the entire world of the Orisha. Also known as Yemaya, Iemanya and Yemaya-Olokun, Yemonja is the deity whose province is the ocean and, given that the Middle Passage was the cultural and spatial crossroad to Africa’s numerous diasporas, this deity links the shared histories of African and African –descent cultural praxis worldwide. Since Yemonja also references sexual, creative, spatial and spiritual energies, the editors and contributors see her as pivotal to this project as an expansive and original cartography of impact of the African feminine divine globally. This work provides the context for understanding how the spiritual conceptualizations of the African feminine divine underpin critical cultural forms, even when it has been previously unacknowledged and despite the cultural encounters with European and Western models of being. Scholars of African diaspora studies and the arts will find this book particularly interesting.

Critical Responses About the Black Family in Toni Morrison's God Help the Child explores the integral role of what Kobi Kambon has called the “conscious African family” in developing commercial success stories such as those of Morrison’s protagonist, Bride. Initially, Bride’s accomplishments are an extension of a superficial “cult of celebrity” which inhabits and undermines the development of meaningful interpersonal relationships until a significant literal and metaphorical journey helps her redefine success by facilitating the building of community and family.

Building upon the incorporation of fieldnotes into anthropological research, this edited collection explores fieldnote practices from within education and the social sciences. Framed by social justice concerns about power in knowledge production, this insightful collection explores methodological questions about the production, use, sharing, and dissemination of fieldnotes. Particular attention is given to the role of context and author positionality in shaping fieldnotes practices. Why do researchers take fieldnotes? What do their fieldnotes look like? What ethical concerns do different types of fieldnotes practices provoke? By drawing on case studies from numerous international contexts, including Argentina, Cameroon, Canada, Ghana, Hong Kong, Hungary, Kenya, Lebanon, Malawi, the Netherlands, South Africa, and the US, the text provides comprehensive and nuanced answers to these questions. This text will be of interest to academics and scholars conducting research across the social sciences, and in particular, in the fields of anthropology and education.

By studying multiple cultural expressions of Blackness throughout different regions of the Americas, the chapters of this book consider the relationship that social and historical processes such as sovereignty and colonialism have on cultural productions made by and about Black Latin American women. Rosita Scerbo analyzes a range of power dynamics as represented in different artistic media of the Afro-Latin/x American community, including photography, muralism, performance, paintings, and digital art. The book acknowledges that racial and gender equity cannot exist without Intersectionality and that is why the entirety of the chapters focus on cultural and visual productions exclusively created by Afro-descendant women. The Black Latin American women featured in the various chapters, spanning multiple artistic mediums and originating from various Latin American and Caribbean nations, including Mexico, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Brazil, and Cuba, collectively pursue the central aim of foregrounding the Afro-descendant woman’s experience. Simultaneously, they strive to enhance the visibility and acknowledgment of gendered Afro-diasporic culture within the Latin American context. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, gender studies, women’s studies, Latin American studies, African diaspora studies, and race and ethnic studies.

Examines the ways in which the inclusion of African diasporic religious practices serves as a transgressive tool in narrative discourses in the Americas. 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.

The Word is conceptualized as a Feminine Principle, being a container that is the Womb. The Word, or the Utterance, or even what the Hindu refer to as the "OM" is Creation itself, a Vessel in which to contain or conceive reality. The poems also reference the feminine knowledge of Odu Ifa: everything that ever has or ever will exist or come into being-and even everything that is not, or has not been, all potential for all creation, good and bad, and the transcendence of all duality and plurality.