Society of the Dead by Todd Ramon Ochoa

[sylvanus]

While people are on the subject of books on Palo and the relative merits thereof, I was wondering if anyone had read Todd Ramon Ochoa's "Society of the Dead: Quinta Manaquita and Palo Praise in Cuba". While it is primarily narrative anthropology, and the author is careful not to betray his oaths, I wonder what those on the inside think of this text. Very well written, and the theory is minimal yet clever, being a student of the inscrutable anthropologist Michael Tuassig. There is the description of a rayamiento, the making of a nganga (including sourcing the nfumbe on the mid-90's Havana black market), and the working of a prenda judia. All throughout a constant erudite reflection upon his teachers insistence upon the centrality and paradoxical nature of the Kalunga. Also a compelling story in his description of the decline of the once great Quinta Manaquita house, reflected viscerally in the dust and ash covering the unattended prendas of the great Tata Emilio. Along with the divisions between his descendant initiates who are the authors Palo teachers. But what really strikes me is that he undergoes all these initiations (which he does not describe) yet admits the entire time that he is essentially a materialist, is never really possessed, works bilongos to dubious results, yet still gains a way to understand and accept completely the reality of the ebbs and flows of the Kalunga. For someone who, for one reason or another, is not likely to ever be involved in this tradition it may give one of the more poetic treatments of it which has yet been written. Certainly in english. Has anyone read this book?