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Provides a new way of looking at literary responses to migration and modernization
This book provides a sophisticated new interdisciplinary interpretation of the formulation and evolution of African American religion and culture. Theophus Smith argues for the central importance of "conjure"--a magical means of transforming reality--in black spirituality and culture. Smith shows that the Bible, the sacred text of Western civilization, has in fact functioned as a magical formulary for African Americans. Going back to slave religion, and continuing in black folk practice and literature to the present day, the Bible has provided African Americans with ritual prescriptions for prophetically re-envisioning, and thereby transforming, their history and culture. In effect the Bible is a "conjure book" for prescribing cures and curses, and for invoking extraordinary and Divine powers to effect changes in the conditions of human existence--and to bring about justice and freedom. Biblical themes, symbols, and figures like Moses, the Exodus, the Promised Land, and the Suffering Servant, as deployed by African Americans, have crucially formed and reformed not only black culture, but American society as a whole. Smith examines not only the religious and political uses of conjure, but its influence on black aesthetics, in music, drama, folklore, and literature. The concept of conjure, he shows, is at the heart of an indigenous and still vital spirituality, with exciting implications for reformulating the next generation of black studies and black theology. Even more broadly, Smith proposes, "conjuring culture" can function as a new paradigm for understanding Western religious and cultural phenomena generally.
Tracing the magical roots of "hoodoo" back to West Africa, the author provides a history of this nature-based healing tradition and offers practical advice on how to apply hoodoo magic to everyday life.
Conjuring Freedom: Music and Masculinity in the Civil War's "Gospel Army" analyzes the songs of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, a regiment of Black soldiers who met nightly in the performance of the ring shout. In this study, acknowledging the importance of conjure as a religious, political, and epistemological practice, Johari Jabir demonstrates how the musical performance allowed troop members to embody new identities in relation to national citizenship, militarism, and masculinity in more inclusive ways. Jabir also establishes how these musical practices of the regiment persisted long after the Civil War in Black culture, resisting, for instance, the paternalism and co-optive state antiracism of the film Glory, and the assumption that Blacks need to be deracinated to be full citizens. Reflecting the structure of the ring shout--the counterclockwise song, dance, drum, and story in African American history and culture--Conjuring Freedom offers three new concepts to cultural studies in order to describe the practices, techniques, and implications of the troop's performance: (1) Black Communal Conservatories, borrowing from Robert Farris Thompson's "invisible academies" to describe the structural but spontaneous quality of black music-making, (2) Listening Hermeneutics, which accounts for the generative and material affects of sound on meaning-making, and (3) Sonic Politics, which points to the political implications of music's use in contemporary representations of race and history.
Poet, playwright, novelist, and public figure, Langston Hughes is regarded as a cultural hero who made his mark during the Harlem Renaissance. A prolific author, Hughes focused his writing on discrimination in and disillusionment with American society. His most noted works include the novel ""Not Without Laughter"", the poem ""The Negro Speaks of Rivers,"" and the essay ""The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain"", to name just a few. ""Langston Hughes, New Edition"" features compelling critical essays that create a well-rounded portrait of this great American writer. An introductory essay by Harold Bloom and a chronology tracing the major events in Hughes' life add further depth to this newly updated study tool.
"Appalachian folk magic and conjure are little known today, but forty or fifty years ago, just about every person you might ask in Appalachia either knew something about it themselves or knew someone who did it. These practices and 'superstitions' are at the core Appalachian culture. Who were the old conjurors and witches of Appalachia? What did they do, believe in, and dress land talk like? How can you learn the ways of conjuring for yourself? This book answers those questions and more"--
Historically, religious scriptures are defined as holy texts that are considered to be beyond the abilities of the layperson to interpret. This volume takes a look at the social, cultural and racial meanings invested in these texts.
"Working Conjure is a blessing. With the increasing commodification of African American and African Diasporic traditions, books about our practices that are simple, direct, and useful seem few and far between. Hoodoo Sen Moise manages to balance a solid delivery on the practice of Conjure with just enough theory to create a foundation to do this spiritual work—which is not, as he also reminds us, spiritual easy—and to continue the work given to us by our ancestors to heal each other and the world we share."—Mambo Chita Tann, author of Haitian Vodou Conjure, also known as Hoodoo or Rootwork, is an old and powerful system of North American folk magic. Its roots derive primarily from West and Central African spiritual traditions but it developed during the slave trade and its purpose at that time was to help ease the terrible oppression experienced by the slaves. Working Conjure explores the history, culture, principles, fundamentals, and ethics of Conjure, while simultaneously serving as a practical how-to guide for actually doing the work. Author Hoodoo Sen Moise has been a practitioner for nearly forty years. In Working Conjure, his first book, he shares the techniques and lessons that will bring Hoodoo alive to those who are new to the practice as well as useful and enlightening information for the adept. In the book he: Explores the primary materials used in Conjure Features spells, rituals, and workings for various purposes Guides readers to learn how to bring this profound school of magic to life “Conjure,” writes Hoodoo Sen Moise, “is not a religion or spiritual path, per se, but rather magic/spiritual work that is done to bring about change in a situation. Whether that situation is a relationship, money, a job, revenge, healing, or cleansing, the fundamental tenet of Conjure is to do work that changes the circumstance.”
With In the Shadow of Invisibility, Sterling Lecater Bland Jr. offers a long-overdue reconsideration of Ralph Ellison, examining the trajectory of his intellectual thought in relation to its resonances in twenty-first-century American culture. Bland charts Ellison’s evolving attitudes on several central topics including democracy, race, identity, social community, place, and political expression. This compelling new exploration of Ellison’s legacy stresses the perpetual need to reexamine the intersections of race, literature, and American culture, with particular attention to how the democratic principle has grown increasingly urgent in the nation’s ongoing, and often contentious, conversations about race. Arguing that Ellison saw racial and social identity as being inseparable from the nation’s past and its complicated history of racial anxiety, In the Shadow of Invisibility traces the growth and transformation of Ellison’s ideas across his life and work, from his early apprentice writing that culminated in his groundbreaking first novel, Invisible Man, through the posthumous publication of his unfinished second novel, Three Days before the Shooting . . . Focused on his mythic vision of the promise of America, this book firmly situates Ellison in the sociopolitical environments from which his ideas arose, with close consideration of his published writings, including his influential essays on literature and jazz, as well as his working notes and correspondence. Bland foregrounds Ellison’s thinking on the responsibilities of Black writers to examine democratic ideals, the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow, and the impacts of civil rights movements. Interweaving biography, history, and literary criticism, and drawing from extensive archival research, In the Shadow of Invisibility reveals the extent to which Ellison’s work exposes the contradictions inherent in American culture, arguing anew for the importance and immediacy of his writings in the broader context of American intellectual thought.
These essays introduce the complexities of researching and analyzing race. This book focuses on problems confronted while researching, writing and interpreting race and slavery, such as conflict between ideological perspectives, and changing interpretations of the questions.