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Children of Blood and Bone: What a Film Adaptation Can Carry
Ask a babaláwo how many òrìṣà (or-EE-shah) there are and you may get a number, then a correction, then a pause that means that is not really the question.
Children of Blood and Bone Film Adaptation: The Yoruba Craft Behind Orïsha
The first studio-released look behind the scenes on Children of Blood and Bone spends a surprising amount of its short running time on fabric.
Jungian Archetypes and the African Mother: How Authority Forms
In more than one household I have sat in, an argument has ended the same way. Someone older, usually a woman, says one short sentence, and the room puts the fight down. Nobody voted.
Fantasy Novel Review: Aido Hwedo, Bida, and the African Dragon
There is a moment, maybe forty pages into a certain kind of book, when the dragon stops being a dragon.
The Negative Father Archetype in African Myth: Mwindo and Yennenga
Twelve days. That is how long it took a Nyanga bard named Shé-Kárisi Candi Rureke, in 1956, to get through the story of Mwindo — twelve days of chanting and narrating and acting out the parts, with an…
Enkai: Maasai God of Rain, Cattle, and the Two-Coloured Sky
The sentence arrives early in almost every guidebook, documentary voice-over and travel blog: Enkai gave the Maasai all the cattle on earth, so every cow in the world is really theirs.
Unkulunkulu: The Zulu First Ancestor Who Came From the Reeds
In a church in KwaZulu-Natal, a congregation sings a name older than the hymn carrying it. Two valleys away, an elder uses that same word in an ordinary sentence about where the family came from.
The Mbombo Creation Myth: How the Kuba World Was Made
The strangest thing about the Mbombo creation myth is not the vomiting. That is the part everyone repeats.
Mawu-Lisa: Is the Fon Creator of Benin One God or Two?
A calabash is an ordinary thing. Split a gourd, dry the two halves, and you have bowls — one for water, one for grain.
Amadioha: The Igbo God of Thunder and the Sworn Oath
In a Nollywood scene you have probably watched some version of, an argument stops dead. A man accused of taking money from his uncle stands up in the compound and offers to swear — by Amadioha.