Dr Jerome Teelucks­ingh

Dr Jerome Teelucks­ingh

One of the most fas­ci­nat­ing re­cent books pub­lished on the West In­di­an di­as­po­ra is The Be­liev­ers. The au­thor, Dr Glenville Ash­by is well-known and re­spect­ed in New York and T&T as an ac­com­plished jour­nal­ist. He pro­vides a pro­found analy­sis in­to the re­li­gious and spir­i­tu­al ex­pe­ri­ences of a seg­ment of the work­ing class Caribbean di­as­po­ra in one of the most di­verse states in the Unit­ed States. The book con­tains 39 con­cise chap­ters that are co­her­ent and in­for­ma­tive. It pro­vides valu­able snap­shots of a di­as­poric peo­ple who are try­ing to sur­vive in their adopt­ed home­land. Ash­by is ac­cu­rate in stat­ing, "The Caribbean psy­che is root­ed in the spir­it world. The spir­its are every­where. They are in­te­gral to so­cial, eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal life."

Ev­i­dence of as­sim­i­la­tion, ac­cul­tur­a­tion and adap­ta­tion is preva­lent in Chap­ters five, six and sev­en. The au­thor pro­vides a first-hand ac­count of Kali wor­ship and re­flects on the lives of Hin­dus in New York. Pun­dit Rakesh Ma­haraj's com­ment was not­ed by Ash­by, "He talked about the City and Fire De­part­ment reg­u­la­tions that re­strict­ed the light­ing of deyas, and how per­form­ing a pu­ja here could be a lit­tle more ex­pen­sive." Through­out the book, Ash­by's analy­ses re­flect a keen ob­serv­er who utilis­es so­cial, re­li­gious and cul­tur­al lens­es. An il­lus­tra­tion of his ob­jec­tiv­i­ty and aware­ness of his­tor­i­cal bag­gage is ev­i­dent in his com­ment, "Every cul­ture is dif­fer­ent and they wor­ship God through their ex­pe­ri­ences...I gave some thought to the whole ex­pe­ri­ence and re­alised how much West­ern re­li­gious thought had prej­u­diced our con­cept of the spir­i­tu­al." In Chap­ter 15, Im­manuel Bones and Chap­ter 22, Hait­ian Mag­ic, Ash­by vivid­ly re­calls the con­duct of meet­ings and the re­ac­tions of par­tic­i­pants and lead­ers. Read­ers would be en­thralled with Chap­ter 28, The Grand­mas­ter, as it of­fers in­sight in­to the mean­ing of the spir­i­tu­al al­pha­bet and oc­cult sym­bols.

The ex­pla­na­tions em­anate from Arch­bish­op Philip Lewis, the grand­mas­ter who re­called see­ing peo­ple, as­so­ci­at­ed with the ban­quets or Kab­bal­is­tic ta­ble, die un­nat­ur­al deaths. The thought-pro­vok­ing is­sues in The Be­liev­ers will prove in­ter­est­ing for schol­ars and lay-peo­ple. Top­ics as life af­ter death, the ex­is­tence of God and spir­i­tu­al forces, good and evil and forms of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with gods will cer­tain­ly con­tribute to philo­soph­i­cal and re­li­gious de­bates. The au­thor al­so pro­vides per­son­al re­flec­tions such as, "The be­lief in God does not re­quire you to be de­vout. It's just a feel­ing you can­not ex­plain, a know­ing that you can­not prove, but a sure bet that there is some­thing much big­ger than us all." This work should serve as an in­spi­ra­tion for West In­di­an writ­ers in North Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope to doc­u­ment the rich spir­i­tu­al ta­pes­try of the Caribbean di­as­po­ra. In ret­ro­spect, The Be­liev­ers should be com­pul­so­ry read­ing for any­one who seeks to un­der­stand the sig­nif­i­cance of spir­i­tu­al and re­li­gious realms of West In­di­ans in New York.

Glenville Ash­by,

The Be­liev­ers: The Hid­den World of West In­di­an Spir­i­tu­al­ism in New York (Lon­don and Hert­ford­shire: Han­sib Pub­li­ca­tions, 2012)

Avail­able:

www.the­be­liev­ers.in­fo

Na­tion­wide: May 16th

Rat­ings:*****: Es­sen­tial