What Do I Read Next?
- In American Voudou: Journey into a Hidden World (1998), Rod Davis shares his personal journey through the United States, particularly the South, to uncover how African voodoo has been maintained and adapted in America. He recounts his interactions with practitioners and believers of various forms of African voodoo, including hoodoo, root medicine, spiritual healing, and black magic.
- Zora Neale Hurston's Mules and Men (1935) documents the folk tales, songs, and voodoo traditions and beliefs of Southern blacks that she gathered during her extensive travels through the South.
- Bruce Jackson's essay "The Other Kind of Doctor: Conjure and Magic in Black American Folk Medicine," featured in African American Religion: Interpretive Essays in History and Culture (1997), edited by Timothy E. Fulop and Albert J. Raboteau, gives serious consideration to the often-overlooked practice of hoodoo or conjure as a healing art within African-American folk culture.
- Paule Marshall's Praise Song for the Widow (1983) narrates the story of a black family's rise in New York, their ensuing struggle with materialism, and the widow Avey Johnson's return to her cultural roots on a Caribbean island.
- Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987) recounts a mother's intense efforts to shield her children from the horrors of slavery. The novel intertwines the real with the supernatural, the living with the dead, and the past with the present.
- In The Tempest, William Shakespeare tells the tale of the magician Prospero and his endeavors to maintain control over his daughter, Miranda, and the other inhabitants of their isolated island. Critics often interpret this play as an American allegory.
- Alice Walker's short story "Everyday Use" (1973) delves into the significance of quilting in fostering black sisterhood and preserving intergenerational connections.
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