Solimar Otero & Toyin Falola 
Yemoja 
Gender, Sexuality, and Creativity in the Latina/o and Afro-Atlantic Diasporas

Finalist for the 2014 Albert J. Raboteau Prize for the Best Book in Africana Religions presented by the Journal of Africana Religions



This is the first collection of essays to analyze intersectional religious and cultural practices surrounding the deity Yemoja. In Afro-Atlantic traditions, Yemoja is associated with motherhood, women, the arts, and the family. This book reveals how Yemoja traditions are negotiating gender, sexuality, and cultural identities in bold ways that emphasize the shifting beliefs and cultural practices of contemporary times. Contributors come from a wide range of fields—religious studies, art history, literature, and anthropology—and focus on the central concern of how different religious communities explore issues of race, gender, and sexuality through religious practice and discourse. The volume adds the voices of religious practitioners and artists to those of scholars to engage in conversations about how Latino/a and African diaspora religions respond creatively to a history of colonization.

Tabla de materias

List of Illustrations and Other Media

Acknowledgments

Note on Terminology and Orthography



Introduction: Introducing Yemoja


Solimar Otero and Toyin Falola




Part 1. Yemoja, Gender, and Sexuality



Invocación / Invocation
En busca de un amnte desempleado / Searching for an unemployed lover


Pedro R. Pérez-Sarduy



1. Nobody’s Mammy: Yemayá as Fierce Foremother in Afro-Cuban Religions


Elizabeth Pérez



2. Yemayá’s Duck: Irony, Ambivalence, and the Effeminate Male Subject in Cuban Santería


Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús



3.
Yemayá y Ochún: Queering the Vernacular Logics of the Waters


Solimar Otero



4. A Different Kind of Sweetness: Yemayá in Afro-Cuban Religion


Martin Tsang



5. Yemoja: An Introduction to the Divine Mother and Water Goddess


Allison P. Sellers




Part 2. Yemoja’s Aesthetics: Creative Expression in Diaspora



6. “Yemaya Blew That Wire Fence Down”: Invoking African Spiritualties in Gloria Anzaldúa’s
Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza and the Mural Art of Juana Alicia


Micaela Díaz-Sánchez



7. Dancing
Aché with Yemaya in My Life and in My Art: An Artist Statement


Arturo Lindsay



8. What the Water Brings and Takes Away: The Work of Marìa Magdalena Campos Pons


Alan West-Durán



9. “The Sea Never Dies”: Yem
oja: The Infinitely Flowing Mother Force of Africana Literature and Cinema


Teresa N. Washington



10. A Sonic Portrait with Photos of Salvador’s Iemanjá Festival


Jamie N. Davidson and Nelson Eubanks



11. Yemaya Offering a Pearl of Wisdom: An Artist Statement


Erin Dean Colcord



Notes on Contributors

Index

Sobre el autor

Solimar Otero is Associate Professor of English and Folklore at Louisiana State University and author of
Afro-Cuban Diasporas in the Atlantic World.
Toyin Falola is Frances Higginbotham Nalle Centennial Professor in History at the University of Texas at Austin. His many books include
Culture and Customs of Libya (coauthored with Jason Morgan and Bukola Adeyemi Oyeniyi);
Women’s Roles in Sub-Saharan Africa (coauthored with Nana Akua Amponsah); and
Africa After Fifty Years: Retrospections and Reflections (coedited with Maurice Amutabi and Sylvester Gundona).