MAGIC AND RELIGION IN IBI ZOBOY’S AMERICAN STREET

Abstract

The relation between religion and migration is fundamental for scholars from different fields. This article broadens the exploration of population movements and religious experience. The author argues that religion and religious traditions are crucial factors for the formation of immigrants’ identities. Stories of migration that are present in religious texts help migrants to locate their own experience of exile or forced migration and to interpret their predicaments. The author briefly discusses scholarship that concentrates on the relationship between migration and narration, but at the same time points out that it lacks the immigrant’s perspective. Thus, the article entails a discussion of religion and religious believes in Ibi Zoboy’s novel ‘American Street’. The homodiegetic narrator, Fabiola, an American-born girl, raised in Haiti, returns to the United States. There she faces drug dealing and an abusive relationship. Fabiola lives in Detroit’s violent neighborhood and her religious beliefs help her to cope with the harsh reality. Moreover, the narrator disrupts colonial stereotypes of Voodoo as primitive and naïve religion. Being an immigrant, she extends the boundaries of ritual space. Fabiola reproduces ritual contexts - offerings, prayers, and possessions by the Lwa (Voodoo gods). Nevertheless, the narrator emphasizes the racialization of religion. For example, immigrants from Haiti are identified as others because they practice Voodoo. The author of the article devotes special attention to the historical context of Voodoo as well as to the peculiarities of migration from Haiti to the United States. It is concluded that religion and religious practices are crucial for the self-determination of immigrants, but they also contribute to their Othering.