African diaspora

So just as much as this gathering was religious, it was also political, as the group organized and prepared to fight for their freedom.

And this is just one snapshot of a particular religious ceremony in a particular country of the African diaspora.

So what are African religions? Well, there's way, way, way more than one answer to that question.

[upbeat music] So now might be a good time for a couple reflections.

Seriously though, when we talk about Africa's size, which is 20% of Earth's land mass and 18% of its population, it really sets the stage for the diversity and complexity of its religions.

This is a continent that contains over 2,000 living languages and a hugely diverse set of religious beliefs and practices and political and economic systems.

And today we're also talking about religions of the African diaspora.

See, during the time of the transatlantic slave trade that began in the 1500s, largely European colonizers removed millions of African people from their homelands.

Dr. Redmond is a Grammy-nominated creator, writer, and scholar of race, culture, and power.

She is the author of two acclaimed books, Anthem, Social Movements and the Sound of Solidarity in the African Diaspora, and the multi-award-winning Everything Man, the Form and Function of Paul Robeson.

A 2023 Guggenheim Fellow, her current project is a forensic listening to Black life before mourning.

She is professor of English and comparative literature and Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University in New York City, where she tends the open collaborative, the Radio in the Orchard Trio.

Now, that's right.

We had the Pan-African Diaspora title on the line.

This match was shorter than I thought it was going to be.

Isaiah Broner won in a very good match, which had Alexis Littlefoot throw in the white towel because he had... shook d dead rights in a in a in a in an arm lock and he won't get now and he won't try to submit very surprised they went that route with the white you know same with the throwing in the towel uh i thought that azura was not going to win tonight but he did the afterbirth was josh navarro was showing sympathy to shook d why isaiah brolin was like him i'm champion who cares so now i don't think it's a heel turn because bronin kind of played the healing this while shook d who no jokes tonight dead serious was the face So, like I said, I am curious to see when we're going to have a return match or what have you.

It was published in French in 1981 and in the same year was awarded the Clarence L.

Hope Prize, a prize awarded every two years for a work of excellence in literature and the humanities relating to the cultural heritage of Africa and the African diaspora.

He has also authored Early

America Revisited, a book that has enriched the study of a wide range of subjects, from archaeology to anthropology, and has resulted in profound changes in the reordering of historical priorities and pedagogy.

that

was current.

And so we set out to internationalize these studies because the obsession with slavery slavery in one place and only covered one fragment of the slave experience because at the heart of this African diaspora there were Africans playing prominent roles in all of the cultural movements worldwide.

And one only has to look at a map of the world to see the position of Africa for its immensity, its great diversity.

So let me ask you, follow on from that.

And I know we're going a lot and we'll wrap up soon, but do you think that the African diaspora, right? Anyone who identifies whether it's ancestral, whether it's direct connection, do you think they have a role to play in really creating this prosperous continent, but really through some of the work that people like you are doing.

So there's an obvious one of people saying, come and invest, bring your money.

We know that.

It was published in French in 1981 and in the same year was awarded the Clarence L.

Hope Prize, a prize awarded every two years for a work of excellence in literature and the humanities relating to the cultural heritage of Africa and the African diaspora.

He has also authored Early America Revisited, a book that has enriched the study of a wide range of subjects, from archaeology to anthropology, and has resulted in profound changes in the reordering of historical priorities and pedagogy.

Professor of African Studies at Rutgers University, Dr.

that

was current.

And so we set out to internationalize these studies because the obsession with slavery slavery in one place and only covered one fragment of the slave experience because at the heart of this African diaspora there were Africans playing prominent roles in all of the cultural movements worldwide.

And one only has to look at a map of the world to see the position of Africa for its immensity, its great diversity.

And for our CPT listeners listening on Monday, Joan Esposito will be talking to media watchers Mark Jacob and Jennifer Schultz and Brian Endless.

Senior lecturer and director of African Studies and the African Diaspora at Loyola University Chicago.

He is also founder of the Come Together Project.

That will all be on live and local and live local and progressive weekdays from 2 to 5 p.m. Central on WCPT 820 a.m. Heartland single dot com and tune in.

And through him, I got a lot of opportunities.

So I was, one of the fellowships I got when I was in that grad program was at IRIDAC at the grad center, which stands for the Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean.

And And then I also got an inaugural fellowship, the first dissertation completion fellowship.

That was a partnership between the CUNY Grad Center and the Schomburg.

So Emily Raboteau is a writer and professor in both Black studies and English at the City College of New York, and she lives in the Bronx, which plays a really important role in this book, and she's a contributing editor at Oryon magazine as well as a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books.

And in addition to essays and criticism about writing and about art, she's the author of two other books, the nonfiction book Searching for Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora, and a novel, The Professor's Daughter.

And this book, Lessons for Survival, is a reworking of some previously published essays along with new material that comes out of this very specific moment in time, out of the two or three years of the COVID pandemic, Black Lives Matter, and a time when we could see increasingly dramatic signs of climate destabilization, during which she was dealing with things like long COVID, among other various physical ailments, and really trying to reconnect with her own practice and sense of self as an artist while mothering her two young sons.

And in preparation for our discussion, I read an interview with her in which she says, quote, "I'm more used to internalizing anger and experiencing it as periodic depression than externalizing it.