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“A really wonderful book.”—Alma Guillermoprieto, author of Dancing with Cuba: A Memoir of the Revolution
“Todd Ramón Ochoa is a magnificent ethnographer. Monumental long-term research and beautifully anchored writing come together to tell a profound story about the legacy of African devotions in Cuba. Profound and compassionate, this is anthropology at its best.”—Ruth Behar, author of An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba and Lucky Broken Girl
“This is a masterpiece—an intensely researched ethnography, a meticulously observed chronicle of the daily mechanics of Cuban life in the humblest of circumstances, and a detailed drill down into the dynamics of spirit possession. Most of all, it’s a ripping good read that unfolds like a movie, although no director could capture all the nuance—or the spirit—that Ochoa gives us.”—Ned Sublette, author of Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo
“There is an elegance to Ochoa’s style that correlates to the elegance of the orisha. Ochoa does not apologize for Cuban religion (a term he doesn’t use), nor explain away the foibles of his subjects. Things are as they are, and this is Cuba in all its magnificent desperation.”—Donald J. Cosentino, editor of Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou and In Extremis: Death and Life in 21st-Century Haitian Art
“It will not be long before A Party for Lazarus is recognized as a classic anthropological text that teaches ethnography in an accessible and provocative way. Without compromising its intellectual heft, the book boasts a wonderful sense of dramatic pacing, suspense, and characterization.”—Elizabeth Pérez, author of Religion in the Kitchen: Cooking, Talking, and the Making of Black Atlantic Traditions
List of contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
PART ONE
1 • The Ring and the Altar
2 • La Sociedad Africana, 1880–1940: Chacha Cairo
among the Dead and the Santos-Orisás
3 • Cucusa Sáez and Her Children
PART TWO
4 • 1999: Return
5 • A Meal for the Dead
6 • Opening
7 • Slaughter
8 • A Bembé for San Lázaro–Babalú Ayé
PART THREE
9 • 2005: Loss
10 • A Hole to Fill
11 • Dear Elégua
12 • 2006: Decay
13 • Oyá
PART FOUR
14 • 2009: Deceit
15 • Voices of the Dead
16 • 2012: Prohibition
17 • Lázaro M.
18 • Two Bembés
PART FIVE
19 • 2014: Despair
20 • Sovereigns of Affliction
Epilogue • 2018: Recovery
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Summary
A Party for Lazarus is the story of a Cuban family, six generations removed from slavery, struggling to honor its ancestors amid changing fortunes and a crumbling state. This intimate intergenerational account centers on an annual feast celebrating ancestors and orisás—the life-changing spirits at the heart of Black Atlantic religious life. Based on twenty years of fieldwork, Todd Ramón Ochoa’s masterful ethnography shows how orisá praise and everyday life have changed in revolutionary Cuba over two decades of economic hardship.
Additional text
"Much more than a traditional ethnography, this work is an affective journey, one that marks the rhythms and sensations of everyday life in a home where Catholic saints, African gods, and the Cuban dead comingle with family, friends, and neighbors."
