Introduction: Introducing Yemoja

1 2 3 4 5 Introduction 6 7 8 Introducing Yemoja 9 10 11 12 Solimar Otero and Toyin Falola 13 14 15 16 17 18 Mother I need 19 mother I need 20 mother I need your blackness now 21 as the august earth needs rain. 22 —Audre Lorde, “From the House of Yemanjá”1 23 24 “Yemayá es Reina Universal porque es el Agua, la salada y la dul- 25 ce, la Mar, la Madre de todo lo creado / Yemayá is the Universal 26 Queen because she is Water, salty and sweet, the Sea, the Mother 27 of all creation.” 28 —Oba Olo Ocha as quoted in Lydia Cabrera’s Yemayá y Ochún.2 29 30 31 In the above quotes, poet Audre Lorde and folklorist Lydia Cabrera 32 write about Yemoja as an eternal mother whose womb, like water, makes 33 life possible. They also relate in their works the shifting and fluid nature 34 of Yemoja and the divinity in her manifestations and in the lives of her 35 devotees. This book, Yemoja: Gender, Sexuality, and Creativity in the 36 Latina/o and Afro-Atlantic Diasporas, takes these words of supplica- 37 tion and praise as an entry point into an in-depth conversation about 38 the international Yoruba water deity Yemoja. Our work brings together 39 the voices of scholars, practitioners, and artists involved with the inter- 40 sectional religious and cultural practices involving Yemoja from Africa, 41 the Caribbean, North America, and South America. Our exploration 42 of Yemoja is unique because we consciously bridge theory, art, and 43 xvii SP_OTE_INT_xvii-xxxii.indd 17 7/9/13 5:13 PM xviii Solimar Otero and Toyin Falola 1 practice to discuss orisa worship3 within communities of color living in 2 postcolonial contexts. We also explore the ways that gender and sexuality 3 inform these communities’ religiosity. 4 The contributors in this volume examine Yemoja and her relation- 5 ship to the construction of gender and sexuality in society and cul- 6 ture through essays and creative works. Some of the creative works in 7 the book include poetry, website production, photo essays, and artists’ 8 statements. All of the works are organized into two sections: “Yemoja, 9 Gender, and Sexuality” and “Yemoja’s Aesthetics: Creative Expression in 10 Diaspora.” These two areas of focus share the evaluative lens of cultural 11 critique that pushes the boundaries of our understanding of how Yemoja 12 traditions situate gender and sexuality in society as transformative and 13 fluid modes of being and doing. Our two unique areas of exploration 14 fit into existing and emerging theoretical, cultural, and historical under- 15 standings of Yemoja. 16 Our foremost goal in this volume is to facilitate scholarly and 17 artistic investigation into the connections among orisa religion, art, and 18 practice in interdisciplinary and transnational ways.4 Our volume uncov- 19 ers work being done on the discourse and practice of Yemoja traditions 20 and their connections to national identity, gender, sexuality, and race. 21 Indeed, orisa-worshipping communities are sites where subjectivities are 22 creatively produced within social and cultural contexts. The chapters and 23 other works in this volume also illustrate the ways that ritual, narrative, 24 and art about Yemoja help to transform these contexts into several 25 important sites of negotiation. 26 One set of negotiations we emphasize occurs within the African 27 Diaspora, between Afro-Atlantic and Latina/o understandings of Yemo- 28 ja. Communities that lay claim to Yemoja traditions often inhabit the 29 multiple cultural, social, and racial locations that these descriptors sug- 30 gest. Therefore, in this volume we are especially interested in addressing 31 and exploring the geopolitical and cultural border crossings that Yemoja 32 religious practices reveal both in daily life and in theoretical terms. To 33 do this, we must examine how the discourses of fluidity found within 34 African and African Diaspora Yoruba religious practices and arts emerge 35 in their many historical and cultural contexts. Here fluidity includes a 36 notion of flexible traditions that are open to hybrid and variable spaces 37 found through Yoruba, and especially orisa, itinerant cultural logics and 38 variable aesthetics.5 From this perspective, many of the contributors pre- 39 sented in this volume seek to uncover the ways that Yemoja is under- 40 stood and reconstructed to reflect, respond, and challenge colonialism 41 as well as the legacy of slavery in the African Diaspora, Latin America, 42 and the Caribbean. 43 SP_OTE_INT_xvii-xxxii.indd 18 7/9/13 5:13 PM Introduction xix Finally, the entire volume considers how constructions of gender 1 and sexuality are deeply connected to Yemoja traditions. Our authors 2 explore the complexity of these constructions within a variety of reli- 3 gious and creative contexts. Thus, this volume emphasizes how images 4 of Yemoja in art, literature, and ritual question what kinds of aesthetics 5 and counter-aesthetics determine the contours of gender and sexuality 6 performed through the figure of Yemoja. 7 Yemoja is a deity known in Yoruba-based Afro-Atlantic religious 8 cultures for her ability to dominate natural phenomena, especially aquatic 9 zones of communication, trade, and transportation such as oceans, rivers, 10 and lagoons. She is also associated with women, motherhood, family, 11 and the arts. One translation of her name in Yoruba is “mother of fish,” 12 metaphorically capturing her essence as the mother of all living things. In 13 transnational contexts, she is also known by multiple names: for example, 14 Yemayá in Cuba and Yemanjá, Iemanjá, and Janaína in Brazil. She is 15 also associated with other water deities, such as Olókùn in Nigeria and 16 Mami Wata across West and Central Africa. Scholars have explored her 17 close relationship to the river deity Oshun.6 18 Anthropologists and art historians have also connected Yemoja to 19 the Gelede festival of Ketu, especially in relation to gender and female 20 power in orisa art and performances.7 As the ancestral “mother” of the 21 Gelede masks and the spirit children they embody, Yemoja is also nec- 22 essarily connected to the powers of the aje, “our mothers”: powerful 23 and hidden female spiritual forces that are especially propitiated during 24 Gelede.8 Since Yemoja is noted as a primordial female orisa, she is central 25 to how Yoruba religious discourses enact the power of performing gen- 26 der as a reflexive critique and satire of these roles in society and culture. 27 In this regard, Oyeronke Olajubu’s study of women in Yoruba religion, 28 Women in the Yoruba Religious Sphere, helps us to consider how religious 29 practices can be gendered through multiple narratives of traditionality 30 that co-exist within the layered tapestry of orisa religious practice.9 31 A unifying consideration of this volume is how gender and sexual- 32 ity are central to Yemoja’s fluidity and to the performance of religious 33 agency among her followers. We are interested in showing how post- 34 colonial feminisms and queer theory can provide new and meaningful 35 readings of Yemoja representations and practices. As Jacqui Alexander 36 asserts in Pedagogies of Crossing, outspoken and anticolonial expressions 37 of gender and sexuality in vernacular religious traditions are especially 38 vexing to official religious and secular institutions.10 In this spirit, the 39 queering of Yemoja traditions discussed in this volume further ques- 40 tion the naturalization of ideologies of neocolonialism, patriarchy, and 41 homophobia that sometimes mark Afro-Atlantic practices in ways that 42 43 SP_OTE_INT_xvii-xxxii.indd 19 7/9/13 5:13 PM xx Solimar Otero and Toyin Falola 1 lead us away from the religious cultures’ transformative powers. Indeed, 2 many of the chapters in this book grapple with the negotiation of what 3 could be considered subaltern communities within these very traditions. 4 Before discussing the specific contributions to the volume, it is 5 important to examine how scholars have understood gender, sex, and 6 race in how orisa religious cultures are represented. Scholars such as 7 Karin Barber and Margaret Drewal have looked at Yoruba religious per- 8 formances such as oriki and ritual dance from the perspective of women’s 9 performative agency within an aesthetics of fluidity and play.11 Although 10 the study of gendered aesthetics remains an accepted way to think 11 about Yoruba performances, debates continue about whether gender 12 indeed exists as an ontological category in Yoruba traditional thought, 13 language, and religious discourse.12 For example, in The Invention of 14 Women: Making African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, Oyeronke 15 Oyewumi argues that Yoruba linguistic registers do not account for 16 gender. The construction of gendered discourses, and the hegemonies 17 that they imply in the West, she argues, were part of the British colonial 18 project but also have manifested in contemporary Western feminist and 19 anthropological work on orisa religions. Her main argument is that biol- 20 ogy, like gender, is socially constructed in its mutability and that Yoruba 21 concepts and performances of both gender and biology are guided by 22 social relationships.13 23 J. Lorand Matory responds vehemently against this argument in 24 Black Atlantic Religion: Tradition, Transnationalism, and Matriarchy 25 in Afro-Brazilian Candomblé. He argues that gender and sexuality do 26 indeed exist in Yoruba culture, especially in Yoruba religious cultures, 27 and that these aspects of social identity are coded within the paradigms 28 of the performance of transnational imagined communities.14 He goes on 29 further to suggest that traditions of secrecy in orisa religious cultures are 30 the matrix by which gender and sexuality are reinterpreted for a variety 31 of transnational political ends.

Load more