Talking to the Dead: Religion, Music, and Lived Memory among Gullah/Geechee Women

Talking to the Dead is an ethnography of seven Gullah/Geechee women from the South Carolina lowcountry. These women communicate with their ancestors through dreams, prayer, and visions and traditional crafts and customs, such as storytelling, basket making, and ecstatic singing in their churches. Like other Gullah/Geechee women of the South Carolina and Georgia coasts, these women, through their active communication with the deceased, make choices and receive guidance about how to live out their faith and engage with the living. LeRhonda S. Manigault-Bryant emphasizes that this communication affirms the women's spiritual faith-which seamlessly integrates Christian and folk traditions-and reinforces their position as powerful culture keepers within Gullah/Geechee society. By looking in depth at this long-standing spiritual practice, Manigault-Bryant highlights the subversive ingenuity that lowcountry inhabitants use to thrive spiritually and to maintain a sense of continuity with the past.

Author: Lerhonda S. Manigault-Bryant
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 06/06/2014
Pages: 304
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.92lbs
Size: 9.16h x 6.00w x 0.66d
ISBN13: 9780822356745
ISBN10: 0822356740
BISAC Categories:
- Social Science | Ethnic Studies | American | African American & Black Studies
- Religion | Spirituality

About the Author

LeRhonda S. Manigault-Bryant is Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at Williams College.