In Search of Bimbia: Transatlantic Slavery & African Diasporan Rememory in Cameroon
In her book, In Search of Bimbia: Transatlantic Slavery and African Diasporan Rememory in Cameroon, Dr. Lisa Aubrey takes readers on a scholarly and personalized African Diasporan journey of tracing roots and reconnecting back to Africa. Written in the tradition of an academic memoir of combining scholarly literature of Africana Studies with the experiential truths of African Diasporans long dispersed from the continent of Africa, Dr. Aubrey engages readers in variegated searches of historic African Slavery Diasporans for their ontological origins on the continent of Africa from where their ancestors were forcibly wrenched. Dr. Aubrey demonstrates what can be done to recover African Diasporan history even when few-to-no records exist from times in history when Africans were regarded as sub-human chattel and dispersed into the Diaspora.
Dr. Aubrey apprises readers on revolutions in DNA technology which, for the first time in humankind, allow African Diasporans from transoceanic slaveries to trace their roots – sometimes their ethnic roots – and penetrate the “slavery wall” which is a major and obstacle in most African Diasporan traditional genealogical searches. She further elucidates, in detail, how these DNA technological revolutions became the impetus for the creation of Africa’s first DNA African Reconnection Program that was held in Cameroon, Central Africa December 2010-January 2011.
It is against this backdrop that Dr. Aubrey began her (re)search, with a team of volunteer student-researchers, for European and American enslavements ships that plied and pillaged the Cameroon territory throughout the centuries of transatlantic slavery and after declarations of abolition, which proved to be more-rhetorical-than-real. Dr. Aubrey exposes 200 European and American enslavement ship voyages by name, year of sail, country of origin, and points of disembarkation. Knowing disembarkation is critical for Dr. Aubrey, as it locates the likely whereabouts of the Cameroon Diaspora today. She also tells readers that 200 enslavement ship voyage may be merely the tip of the iceberg, as she calls for more research.
Dr. Aubrey not only awakes readers to the little known and long ignored history of the Cameroon territory and transatlantic slavery by academia, she also reveals the names of those who promoted, participated, purloined, and profited in this crime against humanity. Concomitantly, she also interrogates the issue of reparations.
Using a multi-method research strategy, including a reliance on oral archives, which she employs for her research and explains in detail in her book, Dr. Aubrey locates Bimbia, a site of transatlantic slavery in Cameroon which was scarcely known in 2010, and which has now been declared by the Republic of Cameroon a National Cultural Heritage Site, and (in terms of the size of the land space) by UNESCO, the largest site of transatlantic slavery on the continent of Africa.
Please join Dr. Aubrey in In Search of Bimbia: Transatlantic Slavery and African Diasporan Rememory in Cameroon on a journey of rememory to reaffirm the importance of roots and reconnection back to Africa, as she lays out the importance of historical memory for the recovery of both self and the collective in, and between, the African Diaspora and the continent of Africa.
_________________________________________
Lisa Aubrey is associate professor of African and African American Studies & Political Science in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. Her latest book, Bimbia Devoilee: Diaspora Africaine et Memoire de la Traite negriere Transatlantique au Cameroun (2022), invites a conversation about Cameroon and transatlantic slavery, a topic of crucial importance in the history of Africa and the African Diaspora. It deepens and expands the discourse she began in her book In Search of Bimbia: Transatlantic Slavery & African Diasporan Rememory in Cameroon (2018). Bimbia Devoilee is a significant extension of In Search of Bimbia with updates including 1) documentation of more voyages and descriptive details of European enslavement ships that plundered the Cameroonian territory, and 2) a plethora of additional information per voyage, including landing sites and calculations of mortality rates during these “voyages of terror” to enslavement. She also reveals how revolutionary scientific genetic ancestry-tracing technology and members of the African Diaspora connected by DNA to Cameroon played a central role in putting her on the trail of Bimbia. In addition to her scholarship, Professor Aubrey does community-embedded work related to reconnecting peoples of the African Diaspora to their heritage in Africa. She is also involving students in this exciting work that brings to life historical knowledge of forgotten transatlantic slavery sites in Cameroon & beyond and links enslavement ship records to current Global African family history. Her work has qualified and registered Bimbia on UNESCO’s Tentative List of World Heritage Sites. https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/6478/
Professor Aubrey also is a key player in ASU’s prestigious Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program, recognized by the United Nations for its leadership in education. She is also the author of a book on Maendeleo Ya Wanawake entitled The Politics of Development Cooperation: NGOs, Gender, and Partnership in Kenya.
Vendor Biography
In Search of Bimbia: Transatlantic Slavery & African Diasporan Rememory in Cameroon
In her book, In Search of Bimbia: Transatlantic Slavery and African Diasporan Rememory in Cameroon, Dr. Lisa Aubrey takes readers on a scholarly and personalized African Diasporan journey of tracing roots and reconnecting back to Africa. Written in the tradition of an academic memoir of combining scholarly literature of Africana Studies with the experiential truths of African Diasporans long dispersed from the continent of Africa, Dr. Aubrey engages readers in variegated searches of historic African Slavery Diasporans for their ontological origins on the continent of Africa from where their ancestors were forcibly wrenched. Dr. Aubrey demonstrates what can be done to recover African Diasporan history even when few-to-no records exist from times in history when Africans were regarded as sub-human chattel and dispersed into the Diaspora.
Dr. Aubrey apprises readers on revolutions in DNA technology which, for the first time in humankind, allow African Diasporans from transoceanic slaveries to trace their roots – sometimes their ethnic roots – and penetrate the “slavery wall” which is a major and obstacle in most African Diasporan traditional genealogical searches. She further elucidates, in detail, how these DNA technological revolutions became the impetus for the creation of Africa’s first DNA African Reconnection Program that was held in Cameroon, Central Africa December 2010-January 2011.
It is against this backdrop that Dr. Aubrey began her (re)search, with a team of volunteer student-researchers, for European and American enslavements ships that plied and pillaged the Cameroon territory throughout the centuries of transatlantic slavery and after declarations of abolition, which proved to be more-rhetorical-than-real. Dr. Aubrey exposes 200 European and American enslavement ship voyages by name, year of sail, country of origin, and points of disembarkation. Knowing disembarkation is critical for Dr. Aubrey, as it locates the likely whereabouts of the Cameroon Diaspora today. She also tells readers that 200 enslavement ship voyage may be merely the tip of the iceberg, as she calls for more research.
Dr. Aubrey not only awakes readers to the little known and long ignored history of the Cameroon territory and transatlantic slavery by academia, she also reveals the names of those who promoted, participated, purloined, and profited in this crime against humanity. Concomitantly, she also interrogates the issue of reparations.
Using a multi-method research strategy, including a reliance on oral archives, which she employs for her research and explains in detail in her book, Dr. Aubrey locates Bimbia, a site of transatlantic slavery in Cameroon which was scarcely known in 2010, and which has now been declared by the Republic of Cameroon a National Cultural Heritage Site, and (in terms of the size of the land space) by UNESCO, the largest site of transatlantic slavery on the continent of Africa.
Please join Dr. Aubrey in In Search of Bimbia: Transatlantic Slavery and African Diasporan Rememory in Cameroon on a journey of rememory to reaffirm the importance of roots and reconnection back to Africa, as she lays out the importance of historical memory for the recovery of both self and the collective in, and between, the African Diaspora and the continent of Africa.
_________________________________________
Lisa Aubrey is associate professor of African and African American Studies & Political Science in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. Her latest book, Bimbia Devoilee: Diaspora Africaine et Memoire de la Traite negriere Transatlantique au Cameroun (2022), invites a conversation about Cameroon and transatlantic slavery, a topic of crucial importance in the history of Africa and the African Diaspora. It deepens and expands the discourse she began in her book In Search of Bimbia: Transatlantic Slavery & African Diasporan Rememory in Cameroon (2018). Bimbia Devoilee is a significant extension of In Search of Bimbia with updates including 1) documentation of more voyages and descriptive details of European enslavement ships that plundered the Cameroonian territory, and 2) a plethora of additional information per voyage, including landing sites and calculations of mortality rates during these “voyages of terror” to enslavement. She also reveals how revolutionary scientific genetic ancestry-tracing technology and members of the African Diaspora connected by DNA to Cameroon played a central role in putting her on the trail of Bimbia. In addition to her scholarship, Professor Aubrey does community-embedded work related to reconnecting peoples of the African Diaspora to their heritage in Africa. She is also involving students in this exciting work that brings to life historical knowledge of forgotten transatlantic slavery sites in Cameroon & beyond and links enslavement ship records to current Global African family history. Her work has qualified and registered Bimbia on UNESCO’s Tentative List of World Heritage Sites. https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/6478/
Professor Aubrey also is a key player in ASU’s prestigious Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program, recognized by the United Nations for its leadership in education. She is also the author of a book on Maendeleo Ya Wanawake entitled The Politics of Development Cooperation: NGOs, Gender, and Partnership in Kenya.