25th Anniversary Edition
Copyright 2023
Copyright 2012
ISBN: 978-0-9663972-1-5 (e-book)
ISBN: 978-0-9663972-7-7 (paperback)
Out of Print
Copyright 1998
1999 Ida B.
Wells Black Book Award Winner
ISBN: 0-9663972-0-7 Out of Print |
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Transformative Power of African-centered Rites of Passage
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Bringing the Light into a New Day: African-centered Rites of Passage provides
a thorough discussion on the principles and components of African centered
rites of passage (rites). It should be noted that this is not a "how
to" book, but a book meant to help the reader to know "how to -
how to." It is a guide to understanding "family-based community-linked"
African-centered rites of passage. The title, "Bringing the light into
a new day," is a metaphor that refers to all the familiar quotes and
statements about light and the coming of the dawn, where light is a metaphor
for opportunity, hope and wisdom.
Goggins suggests
that we must be active participants in the creation and management of this
"light," if we are to benefit from it. To bring the light is to
invoke sankofa: to go back and fetch what has worked. Here the implication
is to reflect, and study the past, future, and present in order to draw on
and create those solutions one needs. Please be careful to note, sankofa is
not just taking what is old, but an examination of the future and past. Then
applying only those things from the past in the present that will help create
the desired future.
Our light is
our heritage! If we do not bring this light into the new day, then we doom
ourselves: at worst, to die during "the night" or at best, to be
cast in the faint light of someone else's interpretations, and unable to see
our own potential. Let us remember the words of Marcus Garvey:
Chance has never yet satisfied
the hope of a suffering people. Action, self-reliance, the vision of self
and the future have been the only means by which the oppressed have seen and
realized the light of their own freedom.
African Americans
families and communities must bring the light (opportunity, hope and wisdom)
into the new day, so that the children can see their unique genius. How to
the bring this light? African-centered Rites of Passage! |