By joining a diaspora, a society may begin to change its religious, ethnic, and even racial identifications by rethinking its "pasts." This book explores how this phenomenon affects the religion of the Garifuna. It compares Garifuna spirit possession rituals performed in Honduran villages with those conducted in New York.

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction 1. What Is Diasporic Religion? 2. "These Sons of Freedom": Black Caribs across Three Diasporic Horizons 3. Shamans at Work in the Villages 4. Shamans at Work in New York 5. Ritual in the Homeland; Or, Making the Land "Home" in Ritual 6. Ritual in the Bronx 7. Finding Africa in New York Conclusion Appendix. Trajectory of a Moving Object, the Caldero Notes Glossary Bibliography Index

"I'm extremely impressed by Johnson's book. Diaspora Conversions offers an outstanding combination of theoretical acuity, erudition, and ethnographic prowess. It is bound to become highly influential in the study of religion in motion."—Manuel A. Vasquez, co-author of Globalizing the Sacred: Religion Across the Americas"Johnson's work bursts through the present conversations on African diaspora and brings us onto entirely new ground, shattering simplistic ideas and replacing them with critical distinctions. This smart and talented ethnographer succeeds in combining detailed and rich ethnographic fieldwork with an unrelentingly critical and sophisticated analysis. Johnson's work brings to life one of the most central, perhaps the most central, classic question of African American anthropology: "How is Black culture constituted, even through dislocation and displacement?"—Elizabeth McAlister, author of Rara! Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti and Its Diaspora"Diasporic Conversions convincingly breaks new ground by showing how the meaning of 'homeland' is fundamentally a product of historically situated and contested forms of collective imagination. What will make Johnson's book a benchmark in the study of the African diaspora, and diasporic situations more generally, is that it is not just a richly documented and rigorously argued ethnography, but a genuine anthropology of historical consciousness."—Stephan Palmié, author of Wizards and Scientists: Explorations in Afro-Cuban Modernity and Tradition

"Johnson's work bursts through the present conversations on African diaspora and brings us onto entirely new ground. Johnson's work brings to life one of the most central, perhaps the most central, classic question of African American anthropology: "How is Black culture constituted, even through dislocation and displacement?"-Elizabeth McAlister, author of Rara! Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti and Its Diaspora "Diaspora Conversions offers an outstanding combination of theoretical acuity, erudition, and ethnographic prowess. It is bound to become highly influential in the study of religion in motion."-Manuel A. Vasquez, co-author of Globalizing the Sacred: Religion Across the Americas"