Anthropology Magazine

Lead Me to Life: Voices of the African Diaspora

Race

  • Poetry

  • Poetry

    A dilapidated dark, wooden barn stands in a dandelion field surrounded by grass and trees.

    Elder

    A poet-anthropologist of the African diaspora travels from a northern city to his ancestral home in the rural U.S. South—both as a memory and a belonging.

  • Counterpoint

    Rays of sunlight shine down over hills covered in lush green foliage.

    Lessons From Mars—and Jamaica—on Sovereignty

    The billionaire space race thrives on romantic ideas of colonizing “the last frontier.” An anthropologist looks to Jamaican histories of colonization to show why such narratives are so dangerous—and offers an alternate vision of Black freedom in the Sovereign State of Accompong.

  • Dwelling

    Three people stand on at the bottom of a hill covered in brown grass with a white house at the top. Two cut long, brown plant stalks while the third person observes.

    These Unheralded Workers Are Helping Prevent the Next Wildfire

    In Southern California, an anthropologist’s research aims to illuminate his late father’s work of weed abatement. He’s learning how crews of migrant Latinx workers bring deep environmental knowledge to stop destructive fires at the wildland-urban interface.

  • Identities

    A person in a blue shirt and white, wide-brimmed hat holds a child in one arm. In the background, a person in a pink shirt sits behind a crate.

    Confronting Anti-Blackness in “Colorblind” Cuba

    In the 1960s, Fidel Castro’s revolutionary Communist government claimed to have eradicated racism in Cuba. An anthropologist explores how racial hierarchies persist despite these official narratives, shaping family dynamics and significantly limiting opportunities for Afro-Cubans.