The Yoruba Are on a Rock

Recaptured Africans and the Orisas of Grenada

Shantel A. George

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2025
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781009358989
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The Yoruba Are on a Rock focuses on the Africans who arrived in Grenada decades after the abolition of the British slave trade and how they radically shaped the religious and cultural landscape of the island. Rooted in extensive archival and ethnographic research, Shantel A. George carefully traces and unpacks the complex movements of people and ideas between various points in western Africa and the Eastern Caribbean to argue that Orisa worship in Grenada is not, as has been generally supposed, a residue of recaptive Yoruba peoples, but emerged from dynamic and multi-layered exchanges within and beyond Grenada. Further, the book shows how recaptives pursued freedom by drawing on shared African histories and experiences in the homeland and in Grenada, and recovers intriguing individual biographies of the recaptives, their descendants, and religious custodians. By historicising this island's little-known and fascinating tradition, the book advances our knowledge of African diaspora cultures and histories.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Series page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Table
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 ‘Old Creoles’: The Foundation of Grenada’s Plantation Society
• 2 ‘Scenes of Former Slavery’: Abolitionism and the Persistence of Unfree Labour
• 3 New Nations: The Origins and Identities of Recaptives
• 4 Bonds of Survival: From ‘Liberation’ to Unfreedom
• 5 ‘Acquaintances and Countrymen’: Building Recaptive Communities
• 6 ‘Joining Their Countrymen and Women’: Recaptive Africans after Indentureship
• 7 ‘They Call Them the Yarriba People, It Was African Dance’: Becoming Yoruba, Becoming African
• 8 ‘Three Nights’: Curating African, African Grenadian, and Indian Spaces
• 9 ‘In the Form of the Baptists’: Norman Paul and the Legacies of the Spiritual Baptists
• 10 ‘Grenada Ain’t Far from Africa’: Historical Memories, Human Flight, and the Recovery of African Biographies
• Epilogue
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index