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The Homeward Ship: Analytic Tropes as Maps of and for African-Diaspora Cultural History
- University of Wisconsin Press
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93 The Home ward Ship An a lytic Tropes as Maps of and for African-Diaspora Cul tural His tory j. lo rand ma tory Ihave been in love with Af rica since I was five years old, partly owing to a book. Phys i cally, all that is left of my Il lus trated Book about Af rica by Felix Sut ton and H. B. Ves tal (1959) is the front cover and the first thirty pages of text and vivid lith o graphs, along with the strips of mask ing tape with which my mother had, on multi ple oc ca sions, re paired it. Through these pages, I learned of the desert aou dad, the Egyp tian cobra, the rock hyrax, the fen nec, and the bus tard, as well as the “jun gle” okapi, few of which I had ever seen in the zoo. I then spent years search ing for these crea tures in American zoos, game parks, pet shops, and books. Noth ing in the book, how ever, fas ci nated me as much as the “plate-lipped Sara women,” the kente-draped Ashanti, the “blueveiled Tu a regs,” the Bed ouin fal coner, the leg-o-mutton-sleeved Herero woman, and the “Wa tusi” dancer with his red skirt, dance wands, and colobus-fringed head dress. I have since come to re gard this in dis crim i nate merg ing of African ethol ogy and eth nol ogy as ra cist, but this book be came the seed, or the roots, of my equally in dis crim i nate love for Af rica and long ing to em brace her. Trips through Tropes Yet that em brace came by the grace of multi ple match mak ers. Be fore I ever flew to Af rica, I met her through a Cuban san tera—as the prac ti tion ers of the African-inspired Santería, or Ocha, re li gion are called—who taught Span ish at Ho ward Uni ver sity, in Wash ing ton, D.C. Five gold ban gles on her arm quietly an nounced Dr. Contreras’s de vo tion to and pro tec tion by the Yoruba-Atlantic 94 j. lorand matory god dess Ochún. I sus pected mys tery in their mean ing be fore I knew what they were, and so I reached out with an in qui si tive touch. With ser pen tine speed and bal letic grace, Con tre ras with drew them just be yond my reach. Fol low ing the map laid out by Roger Bastide’s African Re li gions of Bra zil ([1960] 1978), I also stopped over in Bra zil, re trac ing what he and William Bas com (1972) iden tified as the great arc of Yoruba in flu ence in the Amer i cas. Con se quently, Yoru ba land was the cap i tal of the Af rica that I sought. My late sis ter and role model Yvedt also loved Af rica. She fol lowed her pas sion for African art—a pas sion stoked by the books and danced lec tures of Yale Uni ver sity art his tory pro fes sor Rob ert Far ris Thomp son—and con nected our fam ily to a great black pil grim age cycle, which, from the 1960s until the present, has made the jour ney to Af rica al most as im por tant a rite of pas sage for bour geois African Americans as the tour of Eu rope has been for our bour geois Euro-American friends. Be fore her time, in the early 1950s, my ma ter nal aunt and her fam ily had lived in Li be ria. In the 1970s and 1980s, their ultra-modern New Jer sey split-level was dec o rated with African sculp tures, masks, and spears, some of it brought back from Li be ria and much of it pur chased at a Man hat tan gal lery called Mer chants of Oyo. My Liberian-born cou sin ul ti mately mar ried a Ni ger ian, as I did, and now both lives and works bi-continentally. A pa ter nal first cou sin be came Mus lim and mar ried a Se ne gal ese man. And long be fore any of these events, my par ents were intro duced to each other by their Ni ger ian class mate...