Osun Seegesi

Osun Seegesi PDF Author: Diedre Badejo
Publisher: Africa Research and Publications
ISBN:
Category : Osun (Yoruba deity).
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
What does our sophisticated, technically advanced society have to learn from a venerable African goddess? That is the question Dr. Diedre Badejo set out to answer a decade ago, armed only with a tape recorder, a working knowledge of Yoruba language, literature, and culture, and a mental "image" of the African Motherland molded as much by her great grandmother's character as by her own experience of the Black Power and Black Studies movements of the '60s and '70s. The answers Dr. Badejo found as she immersed herself in the ritual orature, sacred songs, and festival drama of the Yoruba goddess Osun Seegesi at the deity's principal shrine in the city of Osogbo, Nigeria, are shared with the world in this detailed documentary/analysis that presents a startling view of human relations and relationships that is powerful in its practicality and revolutionary in its civility. What Osun (pronounced "Oh-Shoon") offers to a civilization standing "at the crossroads" and poised on the "abyss of transition", says the author, is nothing less than "an African feminist theory that challenges the hegemony of the Western social order" with a holistic sociocultural vision that recognizes and affirms the reciprocal role of women and men in building and sustaining a truly civil society.

Osun Seegesi

Osun Seegesi PDF Author: Diedre Badejo
Publisher: Africa Research and Publications
ISBN:
Category : Osun (Yoruba deity).
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book Here

Book Description
What does our sophisticated, technically advanced society have to learn from a venerable African goddess? That is the question Dr. Diedre Badejo set out to answer a decade ago, armed only with a tape recorder, a working knowledge of Yoruba language, literature, and culture, and a mental "image" of the African Motherland molded as much by her great grandmother's character as by her own experience of the Black Power and Black Studies movements of the '60s and '70s. The answers Dr. Badejo found as she immersed herself in the ritual orature, sacred songs, and festival drama of the Yoruba goddess Osun Seegesi at the deity's principal shrine in the city of Osogbo, Nigeria, are shared with the world in this detailed documentary/analysis that presents a startling view of human relations and relationships that is powerful in its practicality and revolutionary in its civility. What Osun (pronounced "Oh-Shoon") offers to a civilization standing "at the crossroads" and poised on the "abyss of transition", says the author, is nothing less than "an African feminist theory that challenges the hegemony of the Western social order" with a holistic sociocultural vision that recognizes and affirms the reciprocal role of women and men in building and sustaining a truly civil society.

Our Mothers, Our Powers, Our Texts

Our Mothers, Our Powers, Our Texts PDF Author: Teresa N. Washington
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253003195
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
"Washington writes supple and thoughtful prose and creatively integrates African and African-derived terminology, which never distract the reader. I consider Our Mothers, Our Powers, Our Texts not only a brilliant study, but also a model to be emulated." —Ousseynou B. Traore, William Patterson University Àjé is a Yoruba word that signifies a spiritual power of vast potential, as well as the human beings who exercise that power. Although both men and women can have Àjé, its owners and controllers are women, the literal and cosmic Mothers who are revered as the gods of society. Because of its association with female power, its invisibility and profundity, Àjé is often misconstrued as witchcraft. However, as Teresa N. Washington points out in Our Mothers, Our Powers, Our Texts, Àjé is central to the Yoruba ethos and cosmology. Not only does it underpin the concepts of creation and creativity, but as a force of justice and retribution, Àjé is essential to social harmony and balance. As Africans were forced into exile and enslavement, they took Àjé with them and continued its work of creating, destroying, harming, and healing in the New World. Washington seeks out Àjé’s subversive power of creation and re-creation in a diverse range of Africana texts, from both men and women, from both oral and contemporary literature, and across space and time. She guides readers to an understanding of the symbolic, methodological, and spiritual issues that are central to important works by Africana writers but are rarely elucidated by Western criticism. She begins with an examination of the ancient forms of Àjé in Yoruba culture, which creates a framework for innovative readings of important works by Africana writers, including Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Ben Okri, Wole Soyinka, Jamaica Kincaid, and Ntozake Shange. This rich analysis will appeal to readers of Africana literature, African religion and philosophy, feminist studies, and comparative literature.

Women in the Yoruba Religious Sphere

Women in the Yoruba Religious Sphere PDF Author: Oyeronke Olajubu
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791486117
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 187

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Book Description
Drawing on a wide range of oral and written sources, this book shows that women occupy a central place in the religious worldview and life of the Yoruba people and shows how men and women engage in mutually beneficial roles in the Yoruba religious sphere. It explores how gender issues play out in two Yoruba religious traditions—indigenous religion and Christianity in Southwestern Nigeria. Rather than shy away from illuminating the tensions between the prominent roles of Yoruba women in religion and their perceived marginalization, author Oyeronke Olajubu underscores how Yoruba women have challenged marginalization in ways unprecedented in other world religions.

African Sacred Spaces

African Sacred Spaces PDF Author: 'BioDun J. Ogundayo
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498567436
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
African Sacred Spaces: Culture, History, and Change is a collection of carefully and analytically written essays on different aspects of African sacred spaces. The interaction between the past and present points to Africans’ continuing recognition of certain natural phenomena and places as sacred. Western influence, the introduction of Christianity and Islam, as well as modernity, have not succeeded in completely obliterating African spirituality and sacred observances, especially as these relate to space in its various iterations. Indeed, Africans, on the continent and in the Diasporas, have responded to the challenges of history, environmentalism, and sustainability with sober and versatile responses in their reverence for sacred space as expressed through a variety of religious, historical, and spiritual practices, as this volume attempts to show.

Osun across the Waters

Osun across the Waters PDF Author: Joseph M. Murphy
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253108630
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Ã’sun is a brilliant deity whose imagery and worldwide devotion demand broad and deep scholarly reflection. Contributors to the ground-breaking Africa's Ogun, edited by Sandra Barnes (Indiana University Press, 1997), explored the complex nature of Ogun, the orisa who transforms life through iron and technology. Ã’sun across the Waters continues this exploration of Yoruba religion by documenting Ã’sun religion. Ã’sun presents a dynamic example of the resilience and renewed importance of traditional Yoruba images in negotiating spiritual experience, social identity, and political power in contemporary Africa and the African diaspora. The 17 contributors to Ã’sun across the Waters delineate the special dimensions of Ã’sun religion as it appears through multiple disciplines in multiple cultural contexts. Tracing the extent of Ã’sun traditions takes us across the waters and back again. Ã’sun traditions continue to grow and change as they flow and return from their sources in Africa and the Americas.

Race and the Enlightenment

Race and the Enlightenment PDF Author: Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN: 9780631201366
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
Emmanuel Eze collects into one convenient and controversial volume the most important and influential writings on race that the European Enlightenment produced.

African Indigenous Religious Traditions in Local and Global Contexts

African Indigenous Religious Traditions in Local and Global Contexts PDF Author: Ogungbile, David O.
Publisher: Malthouse Press
ISBN: 9785325016
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 461

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Book Description
This volume honours one of the great scholars of our era, Professor Jacob Olupona. Although he has conducted significant portions of his career outside of Nigeria, he has not separated himself from his colleagues or from interests in religions in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa. His publications and presentations offer the international scholarly community important critical insights into a range of religious activities, life ways and ideas originating in Africans and the African Diaspora. In spite of the diversity in the thoughts and opinions expressed, and equally of the range of disciplines and topics contained in the book, one can say that the contributors have developed a shared concern about the role of African Indigenous Religious Traditions in the processes of development and the context within which it (development) had or is taking place. The book guides us to a deep understanding and appreciation of how Africans in their varied situations grapple with existential problems through philosophical ruminations, complex ritual processes, cultivated memory and organized coping strategies.

New Criticism and Pedagogical Directions for Contemporary Black Women Writers

New Criticism and Pedagogical Directions for Contemporary Black Women Writers PDF Author: LaToya Jefferson-James
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793606714
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
New Criticism and Pedagogical Directions for Contemporary Black Women Writers is a collection of critical and pedagogical essays that shed new light on the creative depths of Black women writers. On the one hand, some Black women writers have been heavily anthologized, they have more often than not been restricted by critical metanarratives. Some of their works have been lionized while others remain neglected. On the other hand, some Black women writers have been ignored and understudied. This collection corrects the gaps in our critical thinking about Black women writers by introducing them to a new generation of undergraduate and graduate students, and by presenting pedagogical essays to our colleagues currently working in the field.

With This Root about My Person

With This Root about My Person PDF Author: Jennifer Reid
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
ISBN: 0826361633
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Charles H. Long’s groundbreaking works on Africana religious studies serve as the backdrop to With This Root about My Person. The volume features twenty-six essays by a diverse group of students and scholars of Long. Revitalizing an interpretive framework rooted in the Chicago tradition, the essays in this volume vigorously debate the nature of religions in the Americas. In doing so they wrestle with the foundations of the study of religion that emerged out of the European Enlightenment, they engage the discipline’s entrenchment in the conquest of the Americas, and they grapple with the field’s legacy of colonialism. The book demonstrates tremendous breadth and depth of scope in its skillful comparative work on colonialism, which links the religions of the Americas, Melanesia, and Africa. This seminal work is an important addition to the Religions of the Americas Series and a valuable contribution to the field to which Charles H. Long was for so long devoted.

Encyclopedia of African-American Literature

Encyclopedia of African-American Literature PDF Author: Wilfred D. Samuels
Publisher: Infobase Learning
ISBN: 1438140592
Category : African American authors
Languages : en
Pages : 1999

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Book Description
Presents a reference on African American literature providing profiles of notable and little-known writers and their works, literary forms and genres, critics and scholars, themes and terminology and more.