Afro-Cuban Diasporas in the Atlantic World

by Otero, Solimar

• ISBN13: 9781580463263
• ISBN10: 1580463266
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-07-01
• Publisher: Univ of Rochester Pr

Summary

Afro-Cuban Diasporas in the Atlantic World explores how Yoruba and Afro-Cuban communities moved across the Atlantic between the Americas and Africa in successive waves in the nineteenth century. In Havana, Yoruba slaves from Lagos banded together to buy their freedom and sail home to Nigeria. Once in Lagos, this Cuban repatriate community became known as the Aguda. This community built their own neighborhood that celebrated their Afrolatino heritage. For these Yoruba and Afro-Cuban diasporic populations, nostalgic constructions of family and community play the role of narrating and locating a longed for home. By providing a link between the workings of nostalgia and the construction of home, this volume re-theorizes cultural imaginaries as a source for diasporic community reinvention. Through ethnographic fieldwork and research in folkloristics, Otero reveals that the Aguda identify strongly their Afro-Cuban roots in contemporary times. Their fluid identity moves from Yorubaland to Cuban, and back again, in a manner that illustrates the truly cyclical nature of transnational Atlantic community affiliation. Solimar Otero is assistant professor of English and Folklore at Louisiana State University.

Author Biography

Solimar Otero is assistant professor of English and folklore at Louisiana State University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. viii
Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Grassroots Africans: Havana's "Lagosians"	p. 23
Returning to Lagos: Making the Oja Home	p. 51
"Second Diasporas": Reception in the Bight of Benin	p. 74
Situating Lagosian, Caribbean, and Latin American Diasporas	p. 88
Creating Afrocubauos: Public Cultures in a Circum-Atlantic Perspective	p. 111
Conclusion: Flow, Community, and Diaspora	p. 140
Appendix: Case Studies of Returnees to Lagos from Havana, Cuba	p. 157
Notes	p. 163
Bibliography	p. 199
Index	p. 241
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