Afro-cuban Diasporas In The Atlantic World

This article discusses the movement of Yoruba and Afro-Cuban communities across the Atlantic in the 19th century. It focuses on the repatriation of Yoruba slaves from Cuba to Nigeria, where they formed the Aguda community and celebrated their Afro-Latino heritage. The article also explores the role of nostalgia and cultural imaginaries in shaping diasporic community reinvention. The author, Solimar Otero, is a folklorist and associate professor at Louisiana State University. The article has received positive reviews for its contribution to the understanding of African diasporas and its use of cultural studies and interviews with members of the Aguda community.

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 with their Afro-Cuban roots in contemporary times. Their fluid identity moves from Yoruba to Cuban, and back again, in a manner that illustrates the truly cyclical nature of transnational Atlantic community affiliation. Solimar Otero is Associate Professor of English and a folklorist at Louisiana State University. Her research centers on gender, sexuality, Afro-Caribbean spirituality, and Yoruba traditional religion in folklore, literature and ethnography. Dr. Otero is the recipient of a Ruth Landes Memorial Research Fund grant (2013), a fellowship at the Harvard Divinity School's Women's Studies in Religion Program (2009 to 2010), and a Fulbright award (2001). Review: Otero deflty conveys the complexity of the Atlantic world and the layered, portable and transnational sense of community that emerged...a much-needed study. BULLETIN OF LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH BR> Afro-Cuban Diasporas in the Atlantic World is poised to make a contribution to issues of diaspora, identity, and culture within the understudied area of repatriated Africans and African-descended Latin Americans in Nigeria. Its strengths reside in its sound theoretical grounding in cultural studies, and in the interviews with those of Aguda heritage. Connecting the multi-layered and multi-directional linkages of individuals and communities caught up in slavery and colonialism in the Atlantic world, this study will most certainly enhance the scholarship in African, African diaspora, Atlantic world, and Latin American studies. --Michele Reid Vazquez, Assistant Professor of Atlantic World History, Georgia State University An innovative study that aptly points to the linguistic, cultural, and geographic expansiveness of Afro-Atlantic diasporic communities... anyone interested in a study of the African diaspora that does not begin and end in Africa or the United States will also find Afro-Cuban Diasporas particularly insightful. WESTERN FOLKLORE Completely changes the understanding of the idea of the African diasporas. LEEDS AFRICAN STUDIES BULLETIN A welcome addition... the result of impressive research that includes a vast array of sources and a thorough interpretation of Yoruba diasporas. HISPANIC AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW