
The Sacred Language of the Abakua
Lydia Cabrera(Author)
University Press of Mississippi
Published on 28. December 2020
Book
Paperback/Softback
608 pages
978-1-4968-2949-8 (ISBN)
Description
In 1988, Lydia Cabrera (1899-1991) published La lengua sagrada de los Nanigos, an Abakua phrasebook that is to this day the largest work available on any African diaspora community in the Americas. In the early 1800s in Cuba, enslaved Africans from the Cross River region of southeastern Nigeria and southwestern Cameroon created Abakua societies for protection and mutual aid. Abakua rites reenact mythic legends of the institution's history in Africa, using dance, chants, drumming, symbolic writing, herbs, domestic animals, and masked performers to represent African ancestors. Criminalized and scorned in the colonial era, Abakua members were at the same time contributing to the creation of a unique Cuban culture, including rumba music, now considered a national treasure. Translated for the first time into English, Cabrera's lexicon documents phrases vital to the creation of a specific African-derived identity in Cuba and presents the first "insider's" view of this African heritage. This text presents thoroughly researched commentaries that link hundreds of entries to the context of mythic rites, skilled ritual performance, and the influence of Abakua in Cuban society and popular music. Generously illustrated with photographs and drawings, the volume includes a new introduction to Cabrera's writing as well as appendices that situate this important work in Cuba's history.
With the help of living Abakua specialists in Cuba and the US, Ivor L. Miller and P. Gonzalez Gomes-Casseres have translated Cabrera's Spanish into English for the first time while keeping her meanings and cultivated style intact, opening this seminal work to new audiences and propelling its legacy in African diaspora studies.
With the help of living Abakua specialists in Cuba and the US, Ivor L. Miller and P. Gonzalez Gomes-Casseres have translated Cabrera's Spanish into English for the first time while keeping her meanings and cultivated style intact, opening this seminal work to new audiences and propelling its legacy in African diaspora studies.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Jackson
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
112 colour illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 280 mm
Width: 216 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
1153 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4968-2949-8 (9781496829498)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Lydia Cabrera | Ivor Miller | P. González Gómes-Cásseres
The Sacred Language of the Abakuá
E-Book
12/2020
Penguin Random House South Africa
€29.49
Available for download
Persons
Lydia Cabrera (1899-1991) was a Cuban ethnographer, literary activist, and author of numerous books on Afro-Cuban culture, including El Monte.
Ivor L. Miller is senior lecturer in the Department of History and International Studies at the University of Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria. He also holds a research fellowship from the African Studies Center at Boston University and is author of Voice of the Leopard: African Secret Societies and Cuba and Aerosol Kingdom: Subway Painters of New York City and coeditor (with P. Gonzalez Gomes-Casseres) of Sacred Language of the Abakua, all published by University Press of Mississippi.
P. Gonzalez Gomes-Casseres is senior lecturer emerita in the Spanish and Portuguese Department at Smith College. She is author of La sarten por el mango: Encuentro de escritoras latinoamericanas and Confluencias en Mexico.
Ivor L. Miller is senior lecturer in the Department of History and International Studies at the University of Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria. He also holds a research fellowship from the African Studies Center at Boston University and is author of Voice of the Leopard: African Secret Societies and Cuba and Aerosol Kingdom: Subway Painters of New York City and coeditor (with P. Gonzalez Gomes-Casseres) of Sacred Language of the Abakua, all published by University Press of Mississippi.
P. Gonzalez Gomes-Casseres is senior lecturer emerita in the Spanish and Portuguese Department at Smith College. She is author of La sarten por el mango: Encuentro de escritoras latinoamericanas and Confluencias en Mexico.