A study of the interchange between Cuba and Africa of Yoruban people and
culture during the nineteenth century, with special emphasis on 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.
SolimarOtero 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).
