"But We Are Still Living in Maafa": Commemorating 1619–2019 through Ritual Performances of Healing and Hope in New Orleans and New York.

"But We Are Still Living in Maafa": Commemorating 1619-2019 through Ritual Performances of Healing and Hope in New Orleans and New York Keywords: Maafa; ritual; performance; Ashe Cultural Arts Center; Africana Liturgy EN Maafa ritual performance Ashe Cultural Arts Center Africana Liturgy 42 50 9 12/05/20 20201001 NES 201001 Since the mid-1990s, Maafa commemorations have emerged in various cities throughout the United States as ways to ritualize remembrance of a painful Black past. More specifically, the article focuses on The Ashé Center's and St. Paul Church's 2019 Maafa commemorations in the context of marking four hundred years since the first enslaved Africans were forcibly brought to Jamestown, Virginia in 1619. As such, the New Orleans Maafa commemoration is a mode of communal healing that attends to both personal and social ills "by addressing the participant's needs for commemoration of the past while moving forward to a more positive future."[20] Mitchem's argument concerning the reconfiguring of the past and future is captured in the Ashé Center's language surrounding their commemoration of the Maafa. [Extracted from the article]