“Brazil imported the largest number of enslaved Africans during the Atlantic slave trade era […] Today, with the exception of Nigeria, the largest population of people of African descent is in Brazil […] Yet, Brazil has a complex relationship with its slave past; consequently, these complications spill over into the various dimensions of Brazil’s rich African heritage that originated from this tragic period.”
– Ana Lucia Araujo (introduction to African Heritage and Memories of Slavery in Brazil and the South Atlantic World)
This unprecedented interdisciplinary volume led by Ana Lucia Araujo (Professor of History at Howard University and general editor of the Cambria Studies in Slavery: Past and Present book series) is now available. African Heritage and Memories of Slavery in Brazil and the South Atlantic World is the first book in English to focus on African heritage and public memory of slavery in Brazil and Angola. This interdisciplinary study examines visual images, dance, music, oral accounts, museum exhibitions, artifacts, monuments, festivals, and others forms of commemoration to illuminate the social and cultural dynamics that over the last twenty years have propelled––or prevented––the visibility of African heritage (and its Atlantic slave trade legacy) in the South Atlantic region.
The book makes a very important contribution to the understanding of the place of African heritage and slavery in the official history and public memory of Brazil and Angola, topics that remain understudied. The study’s focus on the South Atlantic world, a zone which is sparsely covered in the scholarly corpus on Atlantic history, will further research on other post-slave societies.
African Heritage and Memories of Slavery in Brazil and the South Atlantic World is an important book for African studies and Latin American studies. It is especially valuable for African Diaspora studies, African history, Atlantic history, history of Brazil, history of slavery, and Caribbean history.
See also Public Memory of Slavery, Paths of the Atlantic Slave Trade and Black Women as Custodians of History.
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