Listen to the Ancestors

Displaced African people built the so-called "New World" on stolen indigenous land for European settlers' profit. To perpetrate this crime against humanity, white settler societies systematically policed and sought to suppress the inter-generational transmission of African language and spirituality. While ultimately unsuccessful, this attempted cultural genocide is an unredressed violation with long-lasting effects. This book is an effort to connect generations through the voice of Afro-Brazilian lineage bearer Nancy "Cici" de Souza, an eighty-one-year-old priestess of the Yoruba-based religion Candomblé. The resident oral historian of the Pierre Verger Foundation's community space in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, she has spent decades studying the culture of her ancestors. Her fifty years of initiation to the Yoruba divinities Osun and Obatala have earned her the title "ebomi," which means "elder." This book is the translation and compilation of interviews with Ebomi Cici regarding spirituality and history. All royalties go to the elder herself, and the Portuguese version is available for free at www.camelliadaoling.com.