Marvels of the African World: African Cultural Patrimony, New World Connections, and Identities (review)

Any anthology is dependent upon the conceptualization of the editor. To the degree that the editor understands and appreciates the scope and dimensions of the topic of the anthology the better that anthology will be for the reader. Niyi Afolabi, largely because of his intellectual breadth and passion, has given us a wonderful anthology.

Marvels of the African World immediately reminds one of Henry Louis Gates's book and documentary, Wonders of the African World but Marvels is a project of a much different order. Afolabi is not trying so much to dazzle us with the glories of Africa as he is assembling some of the best thinkers to deal with the issue of cultural patrimony. Among the distinguished scholars in the volume are Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, Femi Ojo-Ade, Abdias do Nascimento, Elisa Larkin Nascimento, Cheryl Sterling, Tejemola Olaniyan, Adélékè Adéèkó, Dixon Abreu, Israel Ruiz, Roberta Hatcher, Niyi Coker, Jr., Bolaji Campbell, Peniel Joseph, Ian Gregory Strachan, Eleuterio Santiago-Diaz, Halifa Osumare, Steven Butterman, Haakayou, Julie Tate, Bonnie Wasserman, Inocéncia Mata, Zoggyie, Abdul Rasheed Na"Allah, Mario Andre Chandler, Dosinda Garcia-Alvite, Olufemi Vaughan, Adetayo Alabi, and Geoffrey Mitchell. I think what these authors share is a strong sense of the diffusion of African cultural forms and ideas in the African Diaspora. Many of the authors are familiar with the various cultural tendencies, but especially Yoruba, that have influenced and shaped the way Africans in the Americas respond to issues of tradition, customs, religion, art, and music.

The book is structured with a preface by the brilliant philosopher of culture, Femi Ojo-Ade, an introduction by Afolabi himself, and twenty-nine chapters. Of course, as in any anthology the chapters are not all equal, nor all of the same length and importance in the development of the idea of African cultural patrimony in the Diaspora. Nevertheless, they are all significant in some respect to culture. For example, one of the most penetrating accounts I have ever read of Africanisms in the Americas is the essay by Niyi Coker, "African-isms in African American Cinema." I do not recall this subject being broached before and certainly not with the keen insights and sharp points being made by Coker, one of the leading thinkers on the question of cultural dissemination in the film area. Furthermore, I am struck by the way Afolabi arranged the discussions on contemporary cultural philosophies and ideologies, unlocking us from the narrow considerations of W. E. B. Du Bois and the Harlem Renaissance thinkers as if nothing else has ever happened in African thought in the Americas. So to see discussions of Negritude, Afrocentricity, Quilombismo, and Oriki as discourses in the development and maintenance of cultural patrimony is a welcomed sight. In addition, Afolabi's anthology stakes out a claim for Africans in both North and South America as well as the Caribbean. This is important given the argument that has been made recently for a discussion of something called "the Black Atlantic," which is largely a northern conceptualization.

I react not merely to the volume as a collection of excellent pieces, which it is, but to Afolabi's concern about the "fragmentation of our common heritage through age-old divisiveness, non-articulation, and passivity" (8). This is a precocious, uncomplicated, and straightforward reason for wanting to examine cultural patrimony in this age of postmodern fluidity when it seems that nothing is of value in the world of Africans because there is neither patrimony nor children. Quite frankly, I am buoyed by this work, although I do not agree with all of the essays, since as an Afrocentrist, I am always on the look-out for cultural dislocation in literature and cultural studies. I keep thinking that such minor missteps are like learning to skate; we fall sometimes, but we get up and keep moving forward. But I also know that my...