-
Passing the Grace Vessels of Calabash
- University of Illinois Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
14 Passing the Grace Vessels of Calabash Our foreparents carved on (lest they forget) maps, totems symbols and secret names, creating art when some would claim we existed in beast state. Every negro in slavery days had their own hand-engraved calabash. So they’d drink water from grace vessels, their lips kissing lines of maps leading back to Africa, to villages where relatives waited for years before they destroyed the cooking pots of the ones who crossed. ...