A Refuge in Thunder: Candomblé and Alternative Spaces of Blackness

"[An important] detailing of the development and evolution of a major institution of the African Diaspora [and] of Brazilian and Afro-Brazilian identity." --Sheila S. Walker

The Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé has long been recognized as an extraordinary resource of African tradition, values, and identity among its adherents in Bahia, Brazil. Outlawed and persecuted in the late colonial and imperial period, Candomblé nevertheless developed as one of the major religious expressions of the Afro-Atlantic diaspora. Drawing principally on primary sources, such as police archives, Rachel E. Harding describes the development of the religion as an "alternative" space in which subjugated and enslaved blacks could gain a sense of individual and collective identity in opposition to the subaltern status imposed upon them by the dominant society.

Rachel E. Harding is Director of The Veterans of Hope Project at the Iliff School of Theology. She earned a Ph.D. in Latin American history from the University of Colorado in 1997. Her essay "'What Part of the River You're In': African-American Women in Devotion to Osun" appears in Osun across the Waters: A Yoruba Goddess in Africa and the Americas (Indiana University Press, 2001). Harding is also a poet and has published work in Callaloo, Chelsea, Feminist Studies, The International Review of African American Art, Hambone, and several anthologies.