The Souls of Womenfolk: The Religious Cultures of Enslaved Women in the Lower South by Alexis Wells-Oghoghomeh

Author:Alexis Wells-Oghoghomeh [Wells-Oghoghomeh, Alexis]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781469663593
Google: 9k4czgEACAAJ
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2021-11-15T23:54:27.791262+00:00

Ritual Re/membering

In her recollections of the ritual lives of enslaved Georgians, Lowcountry resident Florence Postell narrated the story of a woman who took a basket of “cooked food, cake, pies, and wine” to her daughter’s grave daily. More than a mere errand to appease a spirit, the mother carried dishes and “set out a regular dinner for her daughter and herself” because “she say the daughter’s spirit meet her there and they dine together.”143 As evidenced by Postell’s account, women’s connections and obligations to their children often began prior to birth and continued beyond the grave. The high probability of infant and child death, coupled with the dangers of pregnancy, birth, and the postpartum period in slavery, rendered birth and death inextricable in the lives of women. Though fathers, grandfathers, brothers, and other loved ones also grappled with the precarity of life, women’s presence in birthing rooms and sickrooms made them key sustainers of bondpeople’s ritual practices. Rooted in West African cosmologies yet responsive to American needs, enslaved people’s ritual protocols evinced both remembered and revised interpretations of birth, death, and the stages in between. Like their ancestors, southerners did not regard birth, death, and the circumstances surrounding them as mere accidents of chance. Rather, a person’s birth influenced their powers and choices, thereby making it one of the most spiritually significant moments in an individual’s life. Moreover, death marked a transition to the disembodied realm, with all its attendant powers. The protocols that enslaved people practiced around these events were born of cosmologies that acknowledged the close connection between the living and the dying, the unborn and the deceased. It was only through the proper enactment of protocols that spirits transitioned through the critical moments of the life cycle successfully and communities safeguarded themselves against spiritual retribution. Guided by powerful midwives and healers, enslaved women, men, and children re/membered the medicinal and ritual cycles of their forebears and crafted ceremonial responses to the dismembering effects of enslavement. As ritual authorities, women served alongside preachers, drummers, and other traditionally male figures. These venerated positions within enslaved communities not only reified women’s power in ritual spaces but also formed the basis for their prominence in the psychic spaces of the sacred imagination.

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