FOOD FOR THOUGHT

An enslaved Yoruba woman in Brazil 1885

I believe we could safely state that Yorùbá women have had the greatest impact on African diasporic culture in the Americas.

It was Yorùbá women who established the reiterations of Yorùbá culture and civilization in the Americas via Candomblé in Brazil, Lukumi in Cuba, etc.

“In David Eltis’s ‘Rise of African Slavery in the Americas’ (2000) a particular statement stood out strongly, which called for extra attention.

Drawing upon the massive transatlantic slave trade database, Eltis remarked that although the Yoruba did not constitute a majority of the forced African captives shipped across the Atlantic, they have had an impact out of all proportion to the relative demographic weight on diasporic culture in the Americas.

Having read Eltis‘s book after defending my dissertation in the spring of 2001 at the University of Texas at Austin, I talked with Toyin Falola about why the Yorùbá have had, and continue to have, such a large influence on defining diaspora culture in the New World.“

By Matt D. Childs 

“The Yorùbá Diaspora in the Atlantic World”

Image source: “modafocaa” on Reddit