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79 books match the query 'Blood' and 3 start with s

cover of Spirits, Blood and Drums: The Orisha Religion in Trinidad

Spirits, Blood and Drums

The Orisha Religion in Trinidad

James T. Houk

Temple University Press, 1995

James Houk's field work in Trinidad and subsequent involvement in the Orisha religion allows him a uniquely intimate perspective on a complex and eclectic religion. Originating in Nigeria, Orisha combines elements of African religions (notably Yoruba), Catholicism, Hinduism, Protestantism Spiritual Baptist, and Kabbalah. A religion of spirits and spirit possession, ceremonies and feasts, churches and shrines, sacrifices and sacred objects, Orisha is constantly shifting and unstable, its practice widely varied. As a belief system, it is a powerful presence in the social structure, culture, and, more recently, the political realm of Trinidad.

Houk carefully examines the historical forces that have transformed Orisha from a relatively simple religion in colonial Trinidad to an abstruse mix of belief, ritual, and symbolism. The voices of worshippers and Orisha leaders spring to life the intensity and power of the religion. Houk's own recounting of participation in many of the mystical ceremonies, including taking on the important role of drummer in several feasts, his initiation into Orisha, and his exceptional field research provide fascinating details essential in understanding the development of this Caribbean religion.

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cover of Stained with Blood and Tears: Lynchings, Murder, and Mob Violence in Cairo, Illinois, 1909-1910

Stained with Blood and Tears

Lynchings, Murder, and Mob Violence in Cairo, Illinois, 1909-1910

John A. Beadles

Southern Illinois University Press, 2019

Packed with villains, victims, and heroes, Stained with Blood and Tears recounts the story of what has been called the “equal opportunity” lynchings of Will “Froggie” James, who was black, and Henry Salzner, a white man, in the rowdy river town of Cairo, Illinois, on November 11, 1909. This book is the first to focus on one of the most infamous nights of lynching in the history of the United States, when about one thousand men and women were transformed into a murderous mob. The book also details a lesser-known attempted lynching of a suspected purse snatcher by another mob about ninety days later. That mob was beaten back by about a dozen mostly African American deputies and a white sheriff. Stained with Blood and Tears ends with the saga of the killing of a Cairo policeman in the police station by the sheriff from a neighboring county over an incident that began in a Cairo brothel. The book thoroughly examines a dark side of Cairo’s past when it had a Jim Crow mind-set and crooked policemen and was awash in liquor and teeming with prostitutes and gambling houses. The violence of the era led the town’s Catholic priest to lament, “Must this fair city of ours go ever in garments spattered with blood?”
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cover of Sweetness in the Blood: Race, Risk, and Type 2 Diabetes

Sweetness in the Blood

Race, Risk, and Type 2 Diabetes

James Doucet-Battle

University of Minnesota Press, 2021

A bold new indictment of the racialization of science

Decades of data cannot be ignored: African American adults are far more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes than white adults. But has science gone so far in racializing diabetes as to undermine the search for solutions? In a rousing indictment of the idea that notions of biological race should drive scientific inquiry, Sweetness in the Blood provides an ethnographic picture of biotechnology’s framings of Type 2 diabetes risk and race and, importantly, offers a critical examination of the assumptions behind the recruitment of African American and African-descent populations for Type 2 diabetes research.

James Doucet-Battle begins with a historical overview of how diabetes has been researched and framed racially over the past century, chronicling one company’s efforts to recruit African Americans to test their new diabetes risk-score algorithm with the aim of increasing the clinical and market value of the firm’s technology. He considers African American reticence about participation in biomedical research and examines race and health disparities in light of advances in genomic sequencing technology. Doucet-Battle concludes by emphasizing that genomic research into sub-Saharan ancestry in fact underlines the importance of analyzing gender before attempting to understand the notion of race. No disease reveals this more than Type 2 diabetes.

Sweetness in the Blood challenges the notion that the best approach to understanding, managing, and curing Type 2 diabetes is through the lens of race. It also transforms how we think about sugar, filling a neglected gap between the sugar- and molasses-sweetened past of the enslaved African laborer and the high-fructose corn syrup- and corporate-fed body of the contemporary consumer-laborer.

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