Spectral Arctic by
The Arctic was long imagined as an otherworldly place, thousands of miles from the warmth and familiarity of home, and nineteenth-century Britons were fascinated by the notion of the heroic explorer voyaging through harsh terrain in pursuit of the Northwest Passage. But the mapping of this vast uncharted territory was only part of the fascination with the Arctic; Explorers and those who eagerly followed their perilous progress were also fascinated by the unknown, by the dreams and ghosts that might materialize there. The narratives of Arctic exploration that we are all familiar with today are just the tip of the iceberg, argues Shane McCorristine, and there are a great many more mysterious stories beneath the surface. In contrast to oft-told tales of heroism and disaster, The Spectral Arctic reveals the hidden stories of dreaming and haunted explorers, of frozen mummies, of rescue balloons, visits to Inuit shamans, and of the entranced female clairvoyants who traveled to the Arctic in search of John Franklin's lost expedition. Through new readings of archival documents, exploration narratives, and fictional texts, these stories reflect the complex ways that men and women actually thought about the Arctic in the past. This revisionist historical account also allows us to make sense of current cultural and political concerns in the Canadian Arctic about the long-lost Franklin Expedition and the recent rediscovery of the two ships.
Legend of Korra Turf Wars Part One by
A pompous developer plans to turn the new spirit portal into an amusement park, potentially severing an already tumultuous connection with the spirits. What's more, the triads have realigned and are in a brutal all-out brawl at the city's borders - where hundreds of evacuees have relocated! In order to get through it all, Korra and Asami vow to look out for each other - but first, they've got to get better at being a team and a couple!
Spirit-Filled World by
This book is about African Pentecostalism and its relationship to religious beliefs about a pervading spirit world. It argues that Pentecostalism keeps both a continuous and a discontinuous relationship in tension. Based on field research in a South African township, including qualitative interviews and focus group discussions, the study explores the context of African Pentecostalism as a whole and how it interacts with the concepts of ancestors, divination, and various types of spirit. Themes discussed include the reasons for the popularity of healing, exorcism, the "prosperity gospel," the experience of the Holy Spirit, Spirit manifestations and practices resembling both traditional and biblical precedents, as well as scholarly discussions on African Pentecostalism from theological and social scientific disciplines. The book suggests that the focus on a spirit-filled world affects all kinds of events and explains the rapid growth of Pentecostalism outside the western world.
Experiencing the Beyond by
Experiencing the dimension that lies beyond our empirical grasp of the world has always been a challenge for human beings, for it can expose the limitations of our agency. Such experience, while potentially terrifying, can also furnish a basis for religious faith or hope of a better future. The intercultural essays in this volume analyze ways of dealing with the beyond, including magic, religion, myth, and all-promising utopias.
Shamans, Housewives and Other Restless Spirits by
"This exceptionally well-written book is good reading, not only for specialists but also for beginning students interested in women, Korean culture, and shamanism." --Journal of Asian Studies "Kendall maintains a closeness with and respect for her subject that keeps away the chill of academic distance and yet avoids sentimentality." --Korean Quarterly, Spring 2001
American Voudou by
Voudou (an older spelling of voodoo)--a pantheistic belief system developed in West Africa and transported to the Americas during the diaspora of the slave trade--is the generic term for a number of similar African religions which mutated in the Americas, including santeria, candomble, macumbe, obeah, Shango Baptist, etc. Since its violent introduction in the Caribbean islands, it has been the least understood and most feared religion of the New World--suppressed, outlawed or ridiculed from Haiti to Hattiesburg. Yet with the exception of Zora Neale Hurston's accounts more than a half-century ago and a smattering of lurid, often racist paperbacks, studies of this potent West African theology have focused almost exclusively on Haiti, Cuba and the Caribbean basin. American Voudou turns our gaze back to American shores, principally towards the South, the most important and enduring stronghold of the voudou faith in America and site of its historic yet rarely recounted war with Christianity. This chronicle of Davis's determined search for the true legacy of voudou in America reveals a spirit-world from New Orleans to Miami which will shatter long-held stereotypes about the religion and its role in our culture. The real-life dramas of the practitioners, true believers and skeptics of the voudou world also offer a radically different entree into a half-hidden, half-mythical South, and by extension into an alternate soul of America. Readers interested in the dynamic relationships between religion and society, and in the choices made by people caught in the flux of conflict, will be heartened by this unique story of survival and even renaissance of what may have been the most persecuted religion in American history. Traveling on a criss-cross route from New Orleans across the slave-belt states of Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, dipping down to Miami where the voudou of Cuba and the Caribbean is endemic, and up to New York where priests and practioners increase each year, Rod Davis determined to find out what happened to voudou in the United States. A fascinating and insightful account of a little known and often misunderstood aspect of African-American culture, American Voudou details the author's own personal experiences within this system of belief and ritual, along with descriptions and experiences of other people, ranging from those who reject it entirely to ardent practitioners and leaders. Davis also places voudou in a broad context of American cultural history, from slavery to the Civil Rights Movement, and from Elvis to New Age. Current interest in voudou is related, in part, to the arrival of large numbers of people into the United States from the Caribbean, especially Cuba. Blacks in that country were able to maintain the African religion in a syncretic form, known as santeria. The tensions that have arisen between Cubans and African Americans over both the leadership and the belief system of the religion is discussed. Davis raises questions and offers insight into the nature of religion, American culture, and race relations. The book contains an extensive bibliography for further reading and a glossary of voudou terms for readers unfamiliar with the subject.
Shadow by
Discover the mingling of past and present in this rich African story following Shadow--featuring delightfully spooky art by Caldecott Medal winner Marcia Brown. Shadow itself has no shadow... It goes forth at night to prowl around the fires. It even likes to mingle with the dancers. Thus it is both prowler and dancer. Discover the eerie translation of the poem by Blaise Cendrars about the rich history of African storytellers and shamans passing into memory. Marcia Brown's stunning illustrations in collage, inspired by her travels in Africa, evoke the atmosphere and drama of a life now haunted and enchanted by Shadow--the beliefs of the present and the spirits of the past.
Into the River by
Winner of the Margaret Mahy Award "Some rivers should not be swum in. Some rivers hold secrets that can never be told." Te Arepa is an adventurous Maori boy, bound to the history, customs and rituals of his people. Yet when he comes upon a giant eel while fishing, he is convinced the creature is a taniwha, or water demon, and follows it. Yet what Te Arepa finds in the river is far different, far more sinister. And it will change his life forever. Te Arepa has always been curious about experiencing life beyond his tribe. His wishes seem granted when he is awarded a scholarship at a prestigious boarding school, far away from the Maori. Leaving behind his family and their traditions, Te Arepa sets out to discover a strange new world with customs of its own...as well as new enemies. When he arrives at school, Te Arepa finds the freedom and everything it offers intoxicating. But to fit in, he realizes that he must shed his identity, culture, and even his name. And he comes to realize that what the water demon showed him in the darkness of the river that day changed him, and that freedom comes with a heavy price.
The House of the Spirits by
"Spectacular...An absorbing and distinguished work...The House of the Spirits with its all-informing, generous, and humane sensibility, is a unique achievement, both personal witness and possible allegory of the past, present, and future of Latin America." --The New York Times Book Review Our Shared Shelf, Emma Watson Goodreads Book Club Pick November/December 2020! The House of the Spirits, the unforgettable first novel that established Isabel Allende as one of the world's most gifted storytellers, brings to life the triumphs and tragedies of three generations of the Trueba family. The patriarch Esteban is a volatile, proud man whose voracious pursuit of political power is tempered only by his love for his delicate wife Clara, a woman with a mystical connection to the spirit world. When their daughter Blanca embarks on a forbidden love affair in defiance of her implacable father, the result is an unexpected gift to Esteban: his adored granddaughter Alba, a beautiful and strong-willed child who will lead her family and her country into a revolutionary future. One of the most important novels of the twentieth century, The House of the Spirits is an enthralling epic that spans decades and lives, weaving the personal and the political into a universal story of love, magic, and fate.
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for NonfictionWhen three-month-old Lia Lee Arrived at the county hospital emergency room in Merced, California, a chain of events was set in motion from which neither she nor her parents nor her doctors would ever recover. Lia's parents, Foua and Nao Kao, were part of a large Hmong community in Merced, refugees from the CIA-run "Quiet War" in Laos. The Hmong, traditionally a close-knit and fiercely people, have been less amenable to assimilation than most immigrants, adhering steadfastly to the rituals and beliefs of their ancestors. Lia's pediatricians, Neil Ernst and his wife, Peggy Philip, cleaved just as strongly to another tradition: that of Western medicine. When Lia Lee Entered the American medical system, diagnosed as an epileptic, her story became a tragic case history of cultural miscommunication.Parents and doctors both wanted the best for Lia, but their ideas about the causes of her illness and its treatment could hardly have been more different. The Hmong see illness aand healing as spiritual matters linked to virtually everything in the universe, while medical community marks a division between body and soul, and concerns itself almost exclusively with the former. Lia's doctors ascribed her seizures to the misfiring of her cerebral neurons; her parents called her illness, qaug dab peg - the spirit catches you and you fall down - and ascribed it to the wandering of her soul. The doctors prescribed anticonvulsants; her parents preferred animal sacrifices.
Folk Legends from Tono by
Boldly illustrated and superbly translated, Folk Legends from Tono captures the spirit of Japanese peasant culture undergoing rapid transformation into the modern era. This is the first time these 299 tales have been published in English. Morse's insightful interpretation of the tales, his rich cultural annotations, and the evocative original illustrations make this book unforgettable. In 2008, a companion volume of 118 tales was published by Rowman & Littlefield as the The Legends of Tono. Taken together, these two books have the same content (417 tales) as the Japanese language book Tono monogatari. Reminiscent of Japanese woodblocks, the ink illustrations commissioned for the Folk Legends from Tono, mirror the imagery that Japanese villagers envisioned as they listened to a storyteller recite the tales.The stories capture the extraordinary experiences of real people in a singular folk community. The tales read like fiction but touch the core of human emotion and social psychology. Thus, the reader is taken on a magical tour through the psychic landscape of the Japanese "spirit world" that was a part of its oral folk tradition for hundreds of years. All of this is made possible by the translator's insightful interpretation of the tales, his sensitive cultural annotations, and the visual charm of the book's illustrations. The cast of characters is rich and varied, as we encounter yokai monsters, shape-shifting foxes, witches, grave robbers, ghosts, heavenly princesses, roaming priests, shamans, quasi-human mountain spirits, murderers, and much more.
The Reindeer People by
Since the last Ice Age, the reindeer's extraordinary adaptation to cold has sustained human life over vast tracts of the earth's surface, providing meat, fur, and transport. Images carved into rocks and tattooed on the skin of mummies hint at ancient ideas about the reindeer's magical ability to carry the human soul on flights to the sun. These images pose one of the great mysteries of prehistory: the "reindeer revolution," in which Siberian native peoples tamed and saddled a species they had previously hunted. Drawing on nearly twenty years of field work among the Eveny in northeast Siberia, Piers Vitebsky shows how Eveny social relations are formed through an intense partnership with these extraordinary animals as they migrate over the swamps, ice sheets, and mountain peaks of what in winter is the coldest inhabited region in the world. He reveals how indigenous ways of knowing involve a symbiotic ecology of mood between humans and reindeer, and he opens up an unprecedented understanding of nomadic movement, place, memory, habit, and innovation. The Soviets' attempts to settle the nomads in villages undermined their self-reliance and mutual support. In an account both harrowing and funny, Vitebsky shows the Eveny's ambivalence toward productivity plans and medals and their subversion of political meetings designed to control them. The narrative gives a detailed and tender picture of how reindeer can act out or transform a person's destiny and of how prophetic dreaming about reindeer fills a gap left by the failed assurances of the state. Vitebsky explores the Eveny experience of the cruelty of history through the unfolding and intertwining of their personal lives. The interplay of domestic life and power politics is both intimate and epic, as the reader follows the diverging fate of three charismatic but very different herding families through dangerous political and economic reforms. The book's gallery of unforgettable personalities includes shamans, psychics, wolves, bears, dogs, Communist Party bosses, daredevil aviators, fire and river spirits, and buried ancestors. The Reindeer People is a vivid and moving testimony to a Siberian native people's endurance and humor at the ecological limits of human existence.
Pablo Remembers by
From October 31 to November 2, people in Mexico celebrate the festival of el Dia de Los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. This photodocumentary follows Pablo and his family as they prepare to honor the memory of Pablo's grandmother. Ancona's "photographs catch the affirmation of life that fills the Mexican festival arising from both Aztec and Christian customs honoring the dead....Joyful."--Chicago Tribune. "This intriguing book makes an excellent offering during the Halloween season."--School Library Journal. Also available in a Spanish Language edition, Pablo Recuerda.
Coco
