Part I
Ordinary Home Cooking
1
Space, Time, and Ache
When I open the front door, I am always greeted by at least a dozen eyes. They are not human but cowrie-shell, belonging to the YorĂčbĂĄ god ElegguĂĄ, the guardian of portals, crossroads, and destiny itself. Small round mounds of cement, the ElegguĂĄs are ritual objects believed to embody one of the preeminent LucumĂ gods. The cowries are usually embedded three at a time to create the eyes and mouths of uncannily watchful faces; on one ElegguĂĄ, the grooves on the shells form tiny eyelashes, on another, laugh lines, as if the god were smiling at the rainbow-colored toys and cellophane-wrapped candies arrayed around the clay plate where he rests. Studded with beads, blades, rooster spurs, feathers, brain coral, or none of the above, the sculptures are thought to possess specific personalities. Although invariably vigilant, an ElegguĂĄ may be perceived as a toddler or a gramps-aged grouch, as parrot-garrulous or as mutely enigmatic as a silent film star.1 ElegguĂĄ is the first god received ceremonially by LucumĂ practitioners, and his presenceâalong with the metal implements of his companions, OgĂșn, Ochosi, and Ăsun, collectively termed Warriorsâindicates to those familiar with the religion that a home is under his aegis.2
The ElegguĂĄs with whom I am most intimately acquainted have been located a stoneâs throw from a massive Baptist church, a nail salon, a donut shop, and a liquor storeâwhich is to say, they could have been almost anywhere on Chicagoâs South Sideâat the home of Ashabi Mosley. Beyond the threshold, Ashabiâs own ElegguĂĄ, as her patron deity, normally sat ensconced within his own separate altar, draped in his favorite colorsâscarlet and ebonyâand sporting a diadem that bore more than passing resemblance to the royal crown of the Netherlands.3 This altar occasionally merged with another built for YemayĂĄ, orisha of maternity, the domestic sphere, and the seven seas, to whom Ashabiâs son Fadesiye has been initiated since the age of thirteen. Together Ashabi and her son have acted as the leaders, or âgodparents,â of a predominantly African American, working-class LucumĂ community called IlĂ© Laroye.4 Laroye is one of ElegguĂĄâs praise names, and Ashabiâs home has been viewed as his abode, as much as that of her and Fadesiyeâs protĂ©gĂ©es, or âgodchildren.â
Staggered throughout the three levels of Ashabiâs two-story bungalow were objects seen to contain or represent not only ElegguĂĄ and YemayĂĄ, but also numerous other LucumĂ gods. In addition, images of deities from other traditions were abundantly in evidence. A table above the row of ElegguĂĄs at the door displayed a drawing, as well as a print, of the obstacle-removing, sweets-eating god Ganesh, as if he were ElegguĂĄâs Hindu cousin. On an adjacent wall hung a round plaque depicting the Mesoamerican sun god Tonatiuh, tongue protruding, the disc strongly reminiscent of divining boards used by the LucumĂ order of male priests called babalĂĄwos. Standing in the front window was a two-and-a-half-foot ceramic statue of Shou-Hsing, the balding and bearded Chinese god of longevity, holding the mythical peach of immortality. The piece had been a housewarming gift that Ashabi chose to interpret as an image of ObatalĂĄ, the elderly YorĂčbĂĄ spirit of wisdom, peace, and coolness. Occasionally migrating from back porch to living room, a metal shelf unit kept framed chromolithographs and sequined bottles featuring the saintly Roman Catholic faces of Haitian Vodou gods; before she âmade ocha,â Ashabi was first initiated into Vodou, although she did not go on to pursue religious seniority.5
After seeing the porcelain Buddhas on the windowsill, the winged Egyptian goddess Isis over the sofa, and Janus-faced Nigerian carvings of ElegguĂĄ, one could have come away confused at the profusion of artifacts pirated from different, even competing, aesthetic regimes.6 As Ashabi once told one of her Latina godchildren, âThis is the house of whatever. Lo que sea.â7 But âlo que seaâ does not mean the petulant âwhateverâ of popular parlance, implying passive acceptance of future outcomes and a stubborn reluctance to engage beyond this terse response. To translate literally from the Spanish, âlo que seaâ is âwhat may beâ in the present subjunctive, the grammatical mood of possibility, belief, obligation, and desire. Its members saw IlĂ© Laroye as the house of infinite potential and potency. Far from chaotic in dĂ©cor, the house could be viewed as a North American convolution of the âVodun vortex,â a phrase coined by Dana Rush to denote the unfinished aesthetic of accumulation and assemblage that organizes West African Vodun and Haitian Vodou, along with a number of Black Atlantic religions. The centripetal force of the Vodun vortex is such that any number of influences may be spun into it.
LucumĂâs extension of the Vodun vortex is attested by its ability to convert objects, particularly commodities, from one aesthetic regime to another, without requiring that the items countenance âmonolithic interpretation.â8 The tradition does not demand that initiates recite a creedânone existsâor observe its ceremonies exclusively, but rather, master a repertoire of ritual procedures and norms of conduct dictated by context. ElegguĂĄ is not a jealous god; he willâand doesâhave other gods before him, although in LucumĂ ceremonies he always comes first. Other Black Atlantic religions also allow, and even encourage, objects from foreign traditions to be incorporated into sacred spaces. They are then construed according to local frames of reference.9 Residential structures are similarly open to resignification, and Ashabiâs less-than-private home is exemplary in this regard. She has rallied to the standard set by generations of priests in reconceiving her houseâs floor plan to capitalize on every square foot of available space.
The Spirit of the South Side
The contours of Chicagoâs South Side were hewn during the Great Migration, in what was actually a wave of migrations between 1915 and 1940 that carried tens of thousands to Chicago in search of new beginnings. African Americans in the U.S. South faced lynchings, Jim Crow, and chronic economic problems that combined with environmental crises to render their everyday hardships impossible to bear.10 For those steeped in the biblical imagery of sermons and spirituals, the South was an Egypt tormented by plagues and the scourge of bondage, or at best a desert in which they were condemned to wander. Migration acquired the aura of a pilgrimage, with the journey itself compared to âcrossing over Jordan,â a reference to the Israelites overcoming the last major barrier between themselves and the land of milk and honey. Urban areas with established Black populations, such as Harlem and Detroit, beckoned like electrified Zions. Their âsecond Exodusâ would also be a âsecond Emancipation,â an act of redemption for the entire race, one chosen family at a time.11
Chicagoâs South Side emerged as a Black Metropolis with distinctively African American institutions and forms of association. The most important of these were religious. Prior to the First World War, Chicago was already âa religious mecca for African Americans,â with historic African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.), A.M.E. Zion, and Baptist congregations that remained dominant social and political forces well into the twentieth century.12 During the Great Migration, these churches grew exponentially.13 Since the mid-nineteenth century, A.M.E. churches in Chicago had enjoyed a reputation for their proclamation of the Social Gospel and progressive activism. However, their tentative embrace of migrants cost them dearly, as ministers sympathetic to the Southernersâ plight abandoned the denomination to establish Community churches.14 Having let a golden opportunity for congregational growth slip through their fingers, A.M.E. churches steadily increased in size, but their gains lagged behind those of the Baptists.
Newly minted charismatic denominations made impressive gains. The expressive and participatory character of Pentecostal, Apostolic, and Sanctified church services stood in stark contrast with mainline Black Protestant congregationsâ high-church formality and âhigh-brow pretensions.â15 Many migrants clamored for revival-style services with âfoot-stomping and hand-clapping up-tempo songs,â rousing chants, ecstatic shouting sessions, and an immediate connection with a communally defined source of divine power, made manifest through speaking in tongues, faith healing, and the ritual dissociation, or âslaying in the spirit,â of congregants.16 Pentecostals adopted strict prohibitions on behavior, dress, consumption, and spectatorship, practicing corporeal disciplines intended both to purge their flesh of worldly desires and to prepare it to serve as a medium for Godâs salvific purpose. But their rituals allowed for a much greater acceptance of the Southern bodyâs materiality than did those of more established Black churches.
Residential segregation intensified during the Great Migration, and it was with considerable disenchantment that many heartsick migrants in the âBlack Beltâ of the South Sideâa series of neighborhoods that extended for thirty city blocks along State Streetârealized that they had delivered themselves into another type of captivity, that of the modern ghetto.17 Yet migrants turned to religion not just as a refuge from the âvice districts, gambling houses, unemployment, and racial tensionsâ of Chicago.18 They sought fellowship with others affected by the sojourn north, with comparable experiences of dispossession from their land, vulnerability to mob violence, and racial, gendered, and class-based prejudice.19 Out of necessity, migrants from smaller denominations convened in spaces designed for business purposes, and in the process gave birth to a new institution: the storefront church. Storefront churches were pedestrian yet approachable, promising a spontaneous, unaffected, and visceral style of worship in a modest space reminiscent of the one-room church buildings of the South.
Although mainline denominations ultimately attracted more migrants than the storefronts did, theirs was a Pyrrhic victory, due to the storefront churchesâ wholesale overhaul of the cityâs religious and cultural landscape. Interwar Chicago and its environs were a âgate of traditionâ for Black narrative, plastic, and ritual arts, particularly from the Gulf Coast.20 Storefront churches acted as âinstitutional bases for conjuring traditionsâ called hoodoo or rootwork, the medical and magical techniques developed by enslaved people that fused West and Central African, Amerindian, and colonial European ethnopharmacopeias, folklore, and ritual knowledge.21 In Northern homes, hoodoo doctors or ârootworkersâ became Professors, Teachers, and âGod sent healersâ; in church, the same individuals were rechristened Prophets, Reverends, Elders, Fathers, or Mothers.22 The clairvoyant, curative, and entrepreneurial abilities of such migrants were mobilized liturgically, with scriptural foundations for their âspiritual giftsâ cited chapter and verse if textual legitimization was called for.
In search of a moral-ethical community in which to address the here-and-now, those with a longer history in the urban North also contributed to what has been called âthe rise of cults and sects.â23 African American religious historiography has reproduced the mainstream critique of storefront churches as merely colorful and idiosyncratic, their leaders as charlatans, and their followers as gullible rubes.24 In fact, Southern migrants had a relatively high rate of literacy, and they tended to be skilled and semi-skilled artisans from urban areas.25 The âvibrant experimental religious sceneâ they ushered in intermingled far-flung influences from both material and print culture. African Americans of every economic and educational level availed themselves of communal settings in which to explore esoteric traditions such as Freemasonry.26 Religious movements such as the Black Hebrew Israelites appealed to Chicagoans conversant with scripture, responsive to Garveyite claims of the African American Volk as a new Israel, and disposed to view themselves as a Lost Tribe. Committed to racial equality, Father Divineâs Peace Mission broadcast a message of prosperity, self-sufficiency, and cooperative living, along with the gospel of a flesh-and-blood Messiah.27
Derided as âprimitive,â âhysterical,â and âfrenzied,â the worship styles of the storefront churches violated middle-class models of female virtue, restraint, and decorum.28 Yet churches were often among the few âsafe spacesâ available to migrant women, in which their humanity as both Black and female was acknowledged.29 The Black Spiritual Church provided perhaps the greatest degree of authority and prestige for women, as well as gay men.30 Born in Chicago, Alethea âLeafyâ Anderson founded her Eternal Life Christian Spiritualist Church on the South Side in 1913. About seven years later, Mother Anderson established a second, racially integrated church in New Orleans. Spiritual Churches spread throughout the Midwest along with Southern migrants. From the beginning, they incorporated Roman Catholic devotional practices and material cultural artifacts, including votive candles, statuary, and brocaded ceremonial vestments for ministers. Worship services bore strong traces of Pentecostalism, such as an emphasis on ritual anointing, a declamatory mode of preaching, and a âverse by verseâ exegetical style.31 Members sang Methodist and Baptist hymns from the late nineteenth-century revival period.
Chicago was one of the cities, including New York, New Orleans, and Philadelphia, with a dense concentration of manufacturers specializing in healing and magico-religious products such as charms, talismans, candles, and hex-removing items, sold primarily through mail order. The same social and cultural currents that buoyed the popularity of these productsâthe desire for self-improvement and refashioning; insistence on this-worldly solutions for problems in the here-and-now; the discovery of the autochthonous in the exotic; the impatience with white models of religiosity and master narrativesâcombined with a thoroughgoing critique of the political status quo in the African American encounter with Islam. The Nation of Islam moved its headquarters to Chicago in 1934, but the foundation for its success among migrants had been laid in the 1920s, with the establishment of the Moorish Science Temple by Noble Drew Ali.32 Turning the Orientalism of the day to his advantage, Drew Ali instructed his Black followers that they were descended from the same exalted racial heritage as the urbane and accomplished Moors. His temples also welcomed female leadership.33
Despite its depiction as parochial and insular, the South Side has served as a nexus point of Black intellectual sophistication, born of a kaleidoscopic print and material culture blossoming in the midst of economic disparity and racial discrimination. The sociologist and Chicago-based Muslim community activist Rami Nashashibi has called this âghetto cosmopolitanism.â34 The Black Metropolis has bred cosmopolitan virtues such as tolerance and ecumenism; both anecdotal and sociological evidence suggests a widespread exchange of tropes, techniques, materials, and personnel between religious communities.35 The historian of religions Charles Long writes that âextra-church orientationsâ such as conjure have historically offered âgreat critic...