Katherine Dunham

Katherine Dunham's Journey To Accompong is a memoir written by the renowned dancer, choreographer, and anthropologist Katherine Dunham. The book recounts Dunham's travels to Jamaica in the early 1940s, where she studied the culture and traditions of the Maroons, a group of people who had escaped slavery and established their own community in the mountains. Dunham's journey to Accompong, the heart of the Maroon community, was a transformative experience that deepened her understanding of African diaspora culture and influenced her work as a dancer and choreographer. The book provides a vivid account of Dunham's encounters with the Maroons, their music, dance, and spiritual practices, and the challenges she faced as a Black woman navigating a complex cultural landscape. Throughout the book, Dunham reflects on the importance of cultural exchange and the power of dance and music to bridge divides and bring people together. The memoir is a testament to Dunham's lifelong commitment to promoting cultural understanding and social justice, and it offers a unique perspective on the history and culture of Jamaica and the African diaspora. This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.

Just as surely as Haiti is "possessed" by the gods and spirits of vaudun (voodoo), the island "possessed" Katherine Dunham when she first went there in 1936 to study dance and ritual. In this book, Dunham reveals how her anthropological research, her work in dance, and her fascination for the people and cults of Haiti worked their spell, catapulting her into experiences that she was often lucky to survive. Here Dunham tells how the island came to be possessed by the demons of voodoo and other cults imported from various parts of Africa, as well as by the deep class divisions, particularly between blacks and mulattos, and the political hatred still very much in evidence today. Full of the flare and suspense of immersion in a strange and enchanting culture, Island Possessed is also a pioneering work in the anthropology of dance and a fascinating document on Haitian politics and voodoo.

An internationally known dancer, choreographer, and gifted anthropologist, Katherine Dunham was born to a black American tailor and a well-to-do French Canadian woman twenty years his senior. This book is Dunham's story of the chaos and conflict that entered her childhood after her mother's early death. In stark prose, she tells of growing up in both black and white households and of the divisions of race and class in Chicago that become the harsh realities of her young life. A riveting narrative of one girl's struggle to transcend the painful confusions of a family and culture in turmoil, Dunham's story is full of the clarity, candor, and intelligence that lifted her above her troubled beginnings.