Of Water And Spirit: Ritual, Magic and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman - Hardcover

Malidoma Patrice Somé

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0874777623 ISBN 13: 9780874777628

Publisher: Putnam, 1994

Synopsis

An African shaman recounts his childhood as a virtual prisoner in a Christian seminary, his initial rejection by his fellow Africans, and the death-defying Dagara initiation ritual he performed that reconnected him to his heritage and people.

About this title

About the Author

Malidoma Patrice Some taught literature at the University of Michigan.

Reviews

Born in West Africa in the early 1950s--the author is indefinite about the year--Some was kidnapped at age four by a French Jesuit missionary to be trained as a priest, for the next 15 years enduring the harsh regimen of a seminary where his native language and tribal traditions were systematically suppressed. At age 20 he escaped, but when he returned to his Dugara people in Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) they rejected him as an outsider. To reconnect with his native culture, Some underwent a month-long initiation into shamanism during which he reports that he journeyed to the underworld, became a bird, then a porcupine and was buried alive. A self-described "man of two worlds," Some, who holds a doctoral degree in political science from the Sorbonne and one in literature from Brandeis, is a speaker at men's movement conferences in the US. This vivid autobiography takes readers into a world of black magic, palpable spirits, walking dead people, force fields, transdimensional journeys--a world as strange as anything in imaginative fiction. QPB selection; author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This autobiography vividly describes the author's loss and rediscovery of his cultural and religious heritage. Burkina Faso was still a French colony when Som‚ was born in 1956. At the age of four he was taken from his village by the local Jesuit missionary, who had persuaded his father that he should study for the priesthood. Som‚ begins his account with a description of his early years in the village and his relationship with his grandfather, a powerful elder and medicine man. In the middle section, he deals with the painful years at school and junior seminary. He and his companions were forbidden all reference to their native language and customs, including use of their tribal names, and were victimized by incidents of sadistic cruelty inflicted by the priests and their native assistants. When he was 20 Som‚ was involved in a fight with a priest, after which he fled the seminary and returned to his village. There the elders decided that he should undergo the men's initiation ceremony, normally carried out at puberty. The book's final third describes this extraordinary six-week experience, a dramatic encounter with the psyche that involved, among other things, being buried alive. (Several young men apparently died during the ceremony.) Afterwards the village elders divined that Som‚ should return to offer whites the wisdom and healing they need. To read this book is to be immersed in a fascinating world of spirits, symbolism, and magic, yet the author leaves some unresolved contradictions. His claim, for example, that the Jesuits ``kidnapped'' him is not borne out by his text, and he does not seem to have really lived the harsh village life that he eulogizes. Nor does Som‚ address the crucial question of whether and how traditional ways can flourish in anything but the tribal context. Rservations aside, a beautifully written and personal story that grapples with questions of identity and tradition that affect us all. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Some, who was born about 1956 in Upper Volta, was close to his shaman grandfather. But this relationship and his tribal way of life was destroyed when, at age four, he was kidnapped by a French Jesuit missionary and raised in a seminary, from which he escaped at age 20. Returning home to his Dagara village, he was viewed by some as too tainted by white knowledge and ways to be able to join fully in tribal life; nevertheless, he underwent an intensive and dangerous six-week shamanic initiation that thoroughly established him as a member of the tribe. Later, he was dismayed to learn his destiny as revealed in divination and decreed by tribal elders: to return to the white world as a bridge to save his tribe from complete inculturation. This fascinating autobiography illustrates the profound culture clashes between Western civilization and indigenous cultures. Recommended for large public and academic libraries.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Kidnapped as a young child from his tribal village in West Africa, Some was trained ("brainwashed") for 15 years in a strict French Catholic mission school and Jesuit seminary, until he rebelled, ran away, and made his way back through the jungle to his original home. There he underwent the traditional month-long Dagara initiation rite; but he never lost his Western education. Finally, the elders of his people sent him back to the white world to act as mediator and help the tribe survive. He won a scholarship to the Sorbonne, and now teaches in the U. S. About half the memoir is a protracted account of the initiation ritual, a story of a mystical underworld journey and rebirth that has been enthusiastically received at men's conferences in this country. It includes some self-help talk about our "dysfunctional relationship with the ancestors." What's most compelling here is the insider's account of white religious colonialism in Africa, as well as the sense of what it's like to be a man of two cultures with contradictory versions of reality. Hazel Rochman

Edition details

• Publisher: Putnam
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0874777623
• ISBN 13: 9780874777628
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 311