Marry Me In Africa

Marry Me in Africa is an invitation to discuss approaches and processes in African marriage ritual. As one crucial institution in African culture, marriage in its traditional African definition has helped many of the continents cultures maintain a sense of community and identity. This book invites especially students and researchers into exchanges on some African marriage traditions and their roles in African societies. It concerns those aspects that fascinate me and many other Africans that we believe will interest people in the New World, particularly the Caribbean. Researchers of the African Diaspora might want to use some of the marriage practices for reconstructing models for analysis and interpretation of the formation and transformation of the African heritage in the Diaspora. Marry Me in Africa is particularly useful for scholars not familiar with the different cultural practices among African societies, their sources of identity and diversity, and the implications of these for understanding African social systems. This book will be a useful companion for other scholars who know about some of the cultural practices but are unable to identify exactly their relationship to specific ethnic groups, traditional concepts, social, political, economic, technological, and other practices that have constituted the patterns of cultural behavior among African societies through marriage. Individual or local cultural traditions and practices are presented within the context of the general African cultural heritage, leading to cross-cultural comparison and generalizations. The convergence of traditional marriage patterns and continuities in specific aspects of traditional values and behavior of various societies are examined over the common-ground sense of community among Africans that may not be the same today as in the past. For this reason this book takes the liberty to discuss present manifestations of a transformed past in the present.

African marriages in the Diaspora are in trouble. The divorce rate among Africans living out of Africa is increasing minute after minute leaving many African families in the pool of blood. The center can't hold any longer, and Africans are wondering how they can face the monster devastating their marriages in the Diaspora. Rescuing African Marriages in the Diaspora walks through the process of marriage from the time of just wondering whether to ask, "Will you marry me?" and "Should I say yes to him?", to the time you are married and living together. Rescuing African Marriages in the Diaspora navigates through the wild cultural wind that blows against African marriages in the Diaspora and anchors safely in the commitment to stay married until death do us part.

This book is an intriguing novel exploring the challenges immigrant families face when the social norms of their new home country threaten their cultural and religious traditions and values. In a world of natural disasters, pandemics, migration, racial conflicts, this book addresses marriage as being at the heart of choices people must make wherever they are. It is written for a culturally diverse and volatile context where colorful flags from all over the world fly side by side. The book discusses the complexity of making a choice regarding whom to marry. Such a decision can affect one’s destiny if taken without much thought and prayer. It is set in the context of the Diaspora where two girls from Africa fall in love with two young men from Europe and the Middle East. The book challenges traditionally held beliefs regarding racial integration and demonstrates the enormous possibilities that interracial and intercultural relations bring to a broken world.

Where do those relegated to the margins find belonging?In her luminous debut Unbelonging, Gayatri Sethi deftly interweaves verse, memoir, and a bold call to action as she recounts her experience searching for home in the diaspora. Drawing upon her life story as a Tanzanian-born-Punjabi turned American educator and mother of multiracial children, Sethi tells an intimate tale of stepping into her power while confronting misogyny, racism, and empire. Spanning decades and continents- from Partition to the Black Lives Matter movement, Southern Africa to Muscogee Lands- Unbelonging tells urgent truths, inspires critical self-reflection, and emboldens its readers to pursue radical forms of justice, compassion, and solidarity.