AfroDiaspores

Jodie, Edwin, and Larry, for the London College of Fashion...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 13:13:00 -0400

Jodie, Edwin, and Larry, for the London College of Fashion magazine “Pigeons and Peacocks” by Saga Sigurdardottir, 2011. The cloth speaks KiKongo, French, and Portuguese:

African wax print fabrics tell a story about global politics, culture, and economy that’s as colorful as the prints themselves. The short version of its history goes like this: the Dutch learned about batik from the Indonesians and imitated this process, hoping to factory-produce similar fabric at a cheaper price…[T]heir success would have run the local, traditional artisans out of business, but the Indonesians turned up their noses at the Dutch copies, preventing such a fate. Then, laden with unsold fabrics, Dutch ships found a market for their product in another portion of their trade route: the African “gold coast” (Ghana). The rest is Euro-African history. For over 150 years Dutch wax fabrics have not only reigned in the textile market of West Africa but their popularity quickly spread South and East, into Central Africa, including…DR Congo.

Yes, you heard right: Dutch wax cloth was produced by Europeans imitating Asians but sold to Africans—talk about a global marketplace. What makes these fabrics African, then, is not who produces them but how they are used and who gives them social value.

bellysoulgourmet: You knew it was coming and here it is! The first book review in theHotness...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 16:26:03 -0400

bellysoulgourmet:

You knew it was coming and here it is! The first book review in theHotness “Reading is Sexy” Series. Written by the self-described ‘potty-mouthed chef,’ mom & blogger, Stefanie Kelly, this review will break down the best of “Vibration Cooking” and make you a believer in hot skillet spirituality.

Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor is a charmed culinary master. She is the engaging and evocative author of “Vibration Cooking: Or The Travel Notes Of A Geechee Girl.” We love Vertamae for a number of different reasons. Among them: she is a world traveled grrrrrl from the geechee south. she once danced and sang with Sun Ra’s Afro-Futurist Arkestra. and she burns like a pyromaniac.

From her Southern beginnings she evolved into a fearless visionary who became both worldly and otherworldly through her self-education, bravery, and paradoxically, through her firm, sure-footed grounding in her original self. After befriending an almost famous young Nina Simone, she took it upon herself to migrate to Paris. In a series of the hilarious stories and vignettes that make up her cookbook/ memoir, she mentions that she was tall, and ungainly, that she fled the south to not feel this way. By the time she’d returned, having lived in Paris and NYC’s legendary L.E.S. in the early ’60′s, and even though she’d grown at least another inch, she no longer felt odd. This wanderlust is one of the most important reasons for the special place she holds in my heart.

And with regard to free-thinking cookbooks, she broke the mold. Apparently, she came to the art of cookbook writing because, as a true renaissance woman, she wanted to show her creativity and having mused on the axiom write what you know, she borrowed a friend’s typewriter and birthed a legend in 1970 when her “Vibration Cooking” was first published.

she is a freedom fighter~

Her weapons: the spatula and the pen. When a supercilious jackass from Time Magazine put down soul food as “fatty, overcooked and under-seasoned,” our grrrrl did not mince words: “Sirs: You have the bad taste to say that soul food is tasteless. Your taste buds are so racist that they can’t even deal with black food. Your comment that the ‘soul food fad’ is going to be short-lived is dumb. But then your whole culture is made up of short-lived fads. So you white folks just keep on eating Minute Rice and instant potatoes… and stick to your instant culture. And I will stick to the short-lived fad that brought my ancestors through 400 years of oppression.” It is this blending of the down home/erudite sophisticate that informs her life and in turn the book, and the mix is intoxicating.

With chapter titles like “Nat Turner Apple/Pork Thing” and “Forty Acres and a Jeep” how could “Vibration Cooking” be anything else but magical? The recipes are about her thoughts leading up to the food, the situation(s) surrounding the food, the people who ate the food— they are about the experience of life. For example, “Forty Acres and a Jeep” is a train-of-thought musing on modern society’s way of “treating their cars better than their children,” which turns into a mention of society’s ills: “What, exactly, is a second-class citizen? Either you’re a citizen or you are not… talking about they can’t feed all the people here. Why? And that reminds me of my forty acres and a mule. I’ll take my forty acres and a jeep.” The way she weaves her ancient understanding through each recipe, is what I think makes the book a glowing, relevant, supernatural force that is so ahead of its time, that it could have come out this year and still been miles over folks’ heads. I guess that’s why it was just re-published last summer.

As a very young chef, I was, for a brief, unfortunate period, married to, yet intimidated by cookbooks. I was afraid to revise recipes, afraid to be without every single exact ingredient that I needed for a recipe. I’m sure it had something to do with my neurotic Virgo soul, but for whatever reason, I lived in abject fear that without a precise replica of the directions on the page, my food would be a failure. This attitude is soul killing and allows for no creativity. Vertamae freed me from this compulsive rigidity with her loose recipe style and love of revisions. Many of the recipes are annotated in such a way that they give a lot of versatility and can be translated anew each time, giving freshness and novelty.

she is a grrrrrrl you need on your side~

She uses no measurements, so that whatever you make under her tutelage, is made up of your own vibrational desires, which changed the game for me. You see, I’ve always been terrified of ganache. If you’re not careful ganache can end up, through the simplest of mistakes, a grainy, runny mess. Her recipe, “Mrs. Jackson’s Chocolate Cake,” cleared that right up. Something about the way in which Ms. Smart-Grosvenor writes/vibes, made this young chef feel as though Mrs. Jackson was right over her shoulder. As if it really was such a simple thing to hook up an ersatz (ok, janky) double boiler and go for it until I got it right. And her lead-in to each recipe, like her chocolate cake, which is found in the chapter titled “Bon Voyage Parties,” is always a mesmerizing journey reflecting the quirky souls that inhabited her life:

I thought I would be out of the country for good so I invited EVERYBODY! Black folks, white folks, the man from the candy store on third street, militants, Uncle Toms, racists, Black Nationalists, Yorubas, hustlers, actors, husbands, wives, ex-husbands, ex-wives, mistresses, ex-mistresses, and so on. Well the party was a smash… everyone showed up… Bob Stocking brought his camera and a bottle of gin but forgot to bring his film… Mrs. Jackson was going to bring some sweet potato pies, but Johnnie Mae thought that would be too colored. Mrs. Jackson can cook chocolate cake. Lord can she cook chocolate cake: Mrs. Jackson’s Chocolate Cake – sift 2 cups flour…

The recipes in “Vibration Cooking” are a potent mix of high/ low/ everyday/ arcane. From sweet potato pie to alligator tail, feijoada to jambalaya, all learned in their native towns from Brazil to the American back wood, nothing has escaped this lucky grrrrrl in her travels. Her down to earth, matter-of-fact steez has echoed in my soul and guided me from stressed to blessed more times than I can name. Like Edna Lewis, another worthy lit kitchen idol, she legitimizes soul food and puts it where it belongs: on the world stage of great cuisines. Not only that, but she freely experiments with food from anywhere in the world in a fearless, authentic way that highlights the world’s commonalities as opposed to its differences.

she is a genius ~

–Written by Stefanie Kelly

Stefanie is the proprietress of People’s Kitchen Catering and is currently at work on her own cookbook/memoir. For contact information, recipes and the arcane thought or two follow her blog BELLY.

“Yemaya” by Katherine Skaggs, ca. 2008 Yvonne Daniel...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 15:01:00 -0400

“Yemaya” by Katherine Skaggs, ca. 2008

Yvonne Daniel sees the Lucumí deity from the perspective of a Black scholar, initiate, and master dancer:

The ideas of community and education for ritual participants are expressed most fully in Cuba within the sacred choreography of Yemayá—the caring force, the essence of nurturing, the source of existence, the salt sea waters, the oceans. Yemayá’s dance compels the community to make the shape of the circle, to then furrow down and spin up through a circling spiral, and to reach spiritually for everyone and everything by encompassing or surrounding all Yemayá energy in the circle, and allowing it to radiate outward.

vivipiuomeno: Gordon Parks ph. - The Invisible Man, Harlem, New...

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 12:34:00 -0400

vivipiuomeno:

Gordon Parks ph. - The Invisible Man, Harlem, New York 1952

riverlovesme: Rigoberto and Fredisvinda There was once a great...

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 12:04:09 -0400

Rigoberto Rodriguez Duque Oshunyemí

Fredisvinda Rossell

riverlovesme:

Rigoberto and Fredisvinda

There was once a great Santero named Rigoberto Rodriguez Duque Oshunyemí (iba’ye). He was great for many reasons. He initiated many, many priests in Madruga. According to Afolabí (iba’ye) he was the first white, Cuban born Olorisha to travel back to Africa, and he brought back with him many important “elements” of Orisha worship, such as the koide or loro feather (of the African Grey Parrot — this feather denotes priesthood in our religion and is indispensible). He also happened to win the Cuban national lottery six times, and in thanks for this amazing good luck, he bought the most beautiful objects for his Orisha. He had a solid gold, six inch pilón (mortar used as a throne seat) made for his Shango. So beautiful were his shrines for his Orisha that, rather than destroying them as is custom when a priest dies, they turned his house into a museum which still stands today.

My late Godfather had a deep love for Rigoberto and used to tell me many stories about him. One story he told was about how Rigoberto survived the revolution. During the Cuban Revolution and afterwards, “re-education camps” were opened for homosexuals and transvestites. Rigoberto, like many priests in La Regla de Ocha, was a known homosexual and so it was only a matter of time until this confirmed bachelor ended up in one of these camps. Thinking quickly, he decided the best course of action was to do as homosexuals had done for so long: marry someone.

In Lukumi, it is expressly forbidden for sexual relationships to happen between Godparents and Godchildren, as it is incest. However, Lukumi is an incredibly practical religion, and it’s practitioners follow suit. Rigoberto married one of his Godchildren, Fredisvinda Rossell, a young priestess of Oyá, who Afolabí says is a lesbian. By marrying her, they saved each other from the re-education camps.

They lived together until his death. The story I’ve been told is that one day Rigoberto decided that he had lived long enough. So, he brought his Orisha down to the mat and performed the itutu ceremony (funeral ceremony) for himself, sending away his Orisha. And when he had finished, he simply went to sleep and never woke up.

I guess he killed himself, though the implication in the telling of this story is always that he decided to leave his body — nothing so crass as how he killed himself is discussed, and the word suicide is never used.

Fredisvinda lived on after his passing and ran their house in Matanzas as a museum. Afolabí spoke to her once over the phone sometime in the early 2000s. I assume that by now she has passed on. He said of her that she dressed for Oya every day, always in floral prints. I’ve always had an admiration for those who dress for their Orisha every day, probably because of the way he described Fredisvinda doing so. I wish I knew more of her story, all I know is that she had fierce glasses.

Maferefun Oshun.

Maferefun Oya.

<3

For the godfathers and great-godfathers: Iba’ye, bayén bayén tonú.

I am unearthing the unpublished novel my late...

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 00:00:52 -0400

I am unearthing the unpublished novel my late Camagüey-born, Guantánamo-bred father wrote in the 1990s. He starts with a straightforward critique of Spanish colonialism, the exploitation and attempted extermination of Cuba’s indigenous population, transatlantic slave trade, and rampant expropriation of natural resources. I should have expected it, since this history was in the sofrito for the potaje, the mamey in los licuados, adobo en el mojo, and perejil para the frituras de bacalao at our house. It was always in our mouths, salting the chicharrónes and the innumerable diffuse wounds of his Jewish name.

thespiritofneworleans: For decades, the Baby Dolls were among...

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 13:56:50 -0400

thespiritofneworleans:

For decades, the Baby Dolls were among the more enduring mysteries of New Orleans’ African-American Carnival celebration. Women dressed in vintage baby bonnets and short, frilly skirts showing off their legs and strutting their stuff were fixtures in Zulu parades for ages, but by the 1960s they began to fade away, possibly due to emerging concerns about negative stereotypes. By then, few recalled their history or cared. In recent decades, the Baby Dolls experienced a modest revival that became more robust after Hurricane Katrina, but it took a new book, The “Baby Dolls”: Breaking the Race and Gender Barriers of the New Orleans Mardi Gras Tradition, by Kim Marie Vaz — and this subsequent Presbytere exhibition of images, costumes and memorabilia — to finally put it all in perspective.

praisethelorde: I dont believe in shutting up. My mouth is here for me to speak till i drop dead....

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 12:10:36 -0400

praisethelorde:

I dont believe in shutting up. My mouth is here for me to speak till i drop dead. And even then im gonna come back and haunt people with my voice. Watch me.

nativefunkk: Jazz Poems - Ted Jones On the poet: Who but Ted...

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 02:10:00 -0400

nativefunkk:

Jazz Poems - Ted Jones

On the poet:

Who but Ted Joans [(1928-2003)] — that’s J-o-a-n-s, not J-o-n-e-s — would have transformed the word “Surrealist” into “Sure, really I is”? This brilliantly playful, deeply serious (Groucho) Marxist has been creating exemplary art, music and poetry since the days of the Gaslight, Cafe Wha and Cafe Bizarre in Beat-era Greenwich Village. Since the day in 1955 when he and some friends stunningly denied the death of jazz great Charlie Parker by scrawling “BIRD LIVES” all over New York. An intimate of André Breton, Max Ernst and Paul Bowles, this spiritual son of Langston Hughes is well aware of the African connections of Surrealism. He knows that “Dada” is a word you can find in Africa. Joans is the original Rent-a-Beatnik, a hep cat from a 40s band who has blown his way around the world from Cairo, Illinois to Cairo, Egypt. He has lived everywhere, done everything; he’s spent time in Seattle, Timbuktu and Paris (which he has attempted to “sell”). He is the last hipster, the last bohemian, someone who astonishes the young by magnificently asserting a way of life it never occurred to them existed. The best word for him is an ancient African one: “wow.” Do you want “an alternative life style”? Do you want poetry? Well, shut my mouth wide open. Joans lives.

“Don’t let the minute spoil the hour.” —Ted Joans

thelittleteam: Pele Viva Edson Arantes do Nascimento (b....

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 15:59:40 -0400

thelittleteam:

Pele

Viva Edson Arantes do Nascimento (b. 1940):

Pelé did not invent soccer, but with his light-bulb brilliance and ingenuity, he perfected it.

Although his dazzling skill, speed and the beauty of his playing were his initial tickets to stardom, it was Pele’s individuality and the sheer joy he got from playing that made him the most recognizable player in soccer.

nostalgiagolden: Dorothy Dandridge as Queen Melmendi in...

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 11:24:00 -0400

nostalgiagolden:

Dorothy Dandridge as Queen Melmendi in Tarzan’s Peril (1951)

It has become more widely recognized that Marilyn Monroe enjoyed close friendships with Black actors, singers, and other entertainers. It is less well known that she modeled her bombshell look and trademark gestures not only on 1930s blonde archetypes, but also on African-American stars, like Dorothy Dandridge, whom she knew from the Los Angeles Actors’ Lab.

Monroe worked hard at cultivating her persona, down to the most minute details:

Monroe gave us the dumb-blonde routine and we fell for it. It’s hard for us to believe that a “bimbo” invented one of the arresting identities of our century. But…this was a woman who knew what she was doing and went about the business of self-invention with determination and skill.

She got a nose job and a new chin…She changed her voice, facial expressions, and body movements. Monroe even reinvented her history…The same biographies are filled with evidence that Marilyn was no gift of nature but a creation of Monroe herself.

This process of self-fashioning was both gendered and racialized; in “The Creature from the Black Lagoon: Marilyn Monroe and Whiteness,” Lois W. Banner argues that her “whiteness…offers a case study of the interaction between race, sexuality, gender, and class in the formation of individual and cultural identity.”

The clips above call attention to Dandridge’s breathy delivery of her dialogue and the coquettish movements of her mouth, especially the way she purses her lips to speak and stretches her bottom lip sideways and down to smile while fluttering her eyelids. Monroe adopted and adapted these and other mannerisms—entirely absent from the physical repertoire of the white actresses cited as her models—resulting in the style of nonverbal communication that she used to such striking effect.

To my eye, Monroe impersonators are always imitating Monroe copying Dandridge. She may often be called ”the Black Marilyn Monroe,” but I think it is more fair to say Monroe was the white Dorothy Dandridge.

chavbrand: BBB Black on Black. Beauty On the ivory mask at...

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 15:58:42 -0400

chavbrand:

BBB

Black on Black. Beauty

On the ivory mask at the center of the shirts:

The pendant mask is believed to have been produced in the early sixteenth century for the King or “Oba” Esigie, the king of Benin, to honor his mother, Idia. The Oba may have worn it at rites commemorating his mother, although today such pendants are worn at annual ceremonies of spiritual renewal and purification.

In Benin, ivory is related to the color white, a symbol of ritual purity that is associated with Olokun, god of the sea. As the source of extraordinary wealth and fertility, Olokun is the spiritual counterpart of the “oba”. Ivory is central to the constellation of symbols surrounding Olokun and the “oba”. Not only is it white, but it is itself Benin’s principle commercial commodity and it helped attract the Portuguese traders who also brought wealth to [the “oba”].

The mask is a sensitive, idealized portrait, depicting its subject with softly modeled features, bearing inlaid metal and carved scarification marks on the forehead, and wearing bands of coral beads below the chin. In the openwork tiara and collar are carved stylized mudfish and the bearded faces of Portuguese. Because they live both on land and in the water, mudfish represent the king’s dual nature as human and divine…

The top of the pendant is decorated with heads representing the Portuguese, symbolizing Benin’s alliance with and control over Europeans. The Portuguese continued to appear in Benin art long after they had disappeared from Benin itself.

French Surrealist author and ethnographer Michel Leiris making a...

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 11:30:27 -0400

French Surrealist author and ethnographer Michel Leiris making a libation at a Vodou ceremony in Haiti, alongside mambo (elder priestess) Lorgina Delorge, ca. 1948.

Quotation from George Orwell, “Politics and the English...

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 17:24:00 -0400

Quotation from George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language,” Horizon 13, no. 76 (1946), 252–65, at Orwell Day.

For the ink spilled over Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language,” no one yet appears to have noted the similarity of his pronouncements to those of Aodh de Blácam (1890-1951), the Irish Nationalist journalist, author, and editor, published ten years earlier in ”Secrets of Style,” The Irish Monthly 64, no. 755 (1936), 334-42. I stumbled on the similarity searching for the first known publication in English of the phrase, “Kill your darlings,” as advice for the aspiring writer. At first glance, it looks like Orwell reproduced many of de Blácam insights, complete with reference to “decadence” and “tricks,” along with such instructions: “in the writing of English, let Saxon words be preferred to Romance words; strive never to use more than one abstract word in a sentence…”

Although the direction of influence may be the reverse—and literary scholars no doubt have the documents at hand to prove it—Orwell seems to have fleshed out de Blácam’s recommendations with concrete examples, adding lists of discouraged terms and rules starting with “never.” It is Orwell’s analysis of the relationship between language and thought that elevates his essay into a classic of political theory.

Orwell’s arguments—“political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible”—still apply to the present day, although the state of “print” and “journalism” in 2013 would be unrecognizable to him. But for an author whose first language is not English, and whose writing is always in tension with words and constructions derived from Latin, de Blácam’s essay may be a more useful guide to craft than Orwell’s. To quote Coco Fusco, “English is broken here.”

Perhaps due to his bilingual upbringing, de Blácam offers more nuanced counsel to those of us who teach and try to write in English, even with Spanish, Portuguese, and other instruments of colonial domination between our lips. His concern with raising the profile of literature written in Gaelic gave him a nuanced understanding of the way that twisted tongues produce prose, good and bad:

“Towards perfection in diction, there is no discipline, perhaps, more helpful than translation…Translation obliges us to wrestle for the mot juste; that is, to think exactly.”

Unless I underestimate his current popularity, de Blácam languishes in obscurity, a footnote in Irish letters: no poster in sight, and darlings everywhere.

teratomarty: strawberreli: muddypetticoats: whatwhiteswillneve...

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 13:14:33 -0400

teratomarty:

strawberreli:

muddypetticoats:

whatwhiteswillneverknow:

How to use your white privilege

If the “passing privilege” person is looking at this blog, this is one thing you can do, if you’re up to it.

Reblogging for excellence.

reminder to myself and other white passing folk

This is good advice for anyone occupying a position of privilege, but absolutely vital to your continued sanity if you’re only in said position because there is something that people don’t know about you. If you don’t use your perceived privilege to dismantle the systems of privilege, the truth of your life will become a dark secret that eats you up from the inside.

Zoot Suits, 22 June 1948. Three Jamaican Immigrants (left to...

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 11:30:00 -0400

Zoot Suits, 22 June 1948. Three Jamaican Immigrants (left to right) John Hazel, a 21-year-old boxer, Harold Wilmot, 32, and John Roberts, a 22-year-old carpenter, arriving at Tilbury onboard the ex-troopship Empire Windrush, smartly dressed in zoot suits and trilby hats.

source - Juke Box Britain: Americanisation and Youth Culture, 1945-60, by Adrian Horn, and posted here

The garments in which the spirit mediums are dressed when...

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 11:08:00 -0400

The garments in which the spirit mediums are dressed when possessed by the [Brazilian] orixás—silver crowns, golden helmets, lavishly decorated staffs and scepters, lace blouses, hoop skirts and crinolines are but the outward signs of what is a far deeper merging of the religious imagination in Candomblé with baroque forms of world-making.

The orixás are African aristocrats, who sometimes wear the crowns—fringed or cowrie-studded, as in Africa, or cruciform, as in Europe—of royalty. When they descend into “matter,” they keep their mouths and eyes closed.

“Maroons from Accompong, St. Elizabeth, Jamaica,”...

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 10:47:22 -0400

“Maroons from Accompong, St. Elizabeth, Jamaica,” from the National Library of Jamaica Photograph Collection, ca. 1968.

Accompong is an historical Maroon village in the parish of St. Elizabeth, Jamaica. It is named after the Maroon leader, Accompong, brother of Quao, Cudjoe (or Kojo), Cuffy and Nanny, also Maroon leaders from the Ashanti family of Ghana. The isolated area was a refuge first for the Tainos (Arawaks) from the Spanish and then for the Maroons, (runaway slaves), from the British. The runaway slaves were called Maroons, from the Spanish word cimmarron, meaning wild or untamed. The rebel slaves and their descendants, fought the colonizers – threatening the profitable sugar industry by raiding plantations, killing white militia men and freeing slaves. They captured more lands from plantation holders to create a sacred landscape of what was left to them by colonial treaty…Every January 6, (Cudjoe’s birthday), descendants and friends of the Maroons celebrate the Treaty of 1739 at a festival in Accompong, St. Elizabeth, Jamaica.

dreaminginspanish: Mãe Olga do Alaketu - Born in Salvador,...

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 18:38:00 -0400

dreaminginspanish:

Mãe Olga do Alaketu - Born in Salvador, Bahia 1925, died in 2005. She was one of the most important Candomblé Iyalorixás in Brazil.

From Wikipedia:

A fifth generation descendant of the royal house of Aro in modern Benin; Alaketu served as high priestess of the Ile Maroia Laji temple in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, one of the oldest Candomblé temples in Brazil.

My own translation from the Portuguese article on Wikipedia:

At the end of the eighteenth century, during the expansion of Dahomey, in the kingdom of Ketu, in the reign of Akibiohu, two of the king’s granddaughters were kidnapped and sold as slaves in Bahia. One was Otampê Ojarô that after nine years of working as a maid. Once emancipated, she founded the Terreiro Alaketu.

Mãe Olga do Alaketu was the daughter of Frances Dionysia Regis who was a descendant of Otampê Ojarô, heir of the royal line Arô in Africa, the ancient kingdom of Ketu, formerly Dahomey, now the area of Benin in West Africa.

"Witchcraft, Poison, Law, and Atlantic Slavery" by Diana Paton

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 14:00:04 -0400

"Witchcraft, Poison, Law, and Atlantic Slavery" by Diana Paton:

In response to Tacky’s Rebellion in 1760 in Jamaica, the colony’s House of Assembly passed a law naming a new crime, “obeah.” This important statute led the way in establishing obeah as a phenomenon understood by colonial authorities as a singular and dangerous problem. Investigating the Jamaica assembly’s decision within a wider Caribbean and Atlantic context and alongside the near-contemporaneous “Makandal conspiracy” in Saint Domingue, which was interpreted by French planters as a mass outbreak of poisoning, shows how similar practices came to be interpreted and constructed in different ways in different colonial cultures.

The practices used by Tacky’s “obeah man” and Makandal’s [Haitian] followers were conceptually and practically similar, deriving from African understandings of medicine in which substances could be imbued with spiritual power. Why, then, did the French colonists emphasize poison while the British emphasized obeah (which they glossed with the term “witchcraft”)? In addition to the differences between developments in the colonies, an important context for understanding this distinction was the European experience of the decriminalization of witchcraft. In France decriminalization led to heightened anxiety about poison, while in England witchcraft decriminalization was not connected to poison but made the term and legal category of witchcraft a difficult one for planters to invoke.