Defending Rumba in Havana

“It’s not often that one gets to read something that builds so beautifully and interdisciplinarily on the theoretical areas with which one has been engaged while also inspiring new directions for thought and action. Defending Rumba in Havana is analytically exciting and methodologically caring, offering new avenues for fruitfully engaging the embodied formulation of life otherwise in the wake of both the plantation and the revolutionary state.” - Deborah A. Thomas, author of Political Life in the Wake of the Plantation: Sovereignty, Witnessing, Repair

“Meticulously researched and beautifully written, Defending Rumba in Havana is among the best Cuban ethnographies in the Post-Fidel era. Maya J. Berry’s work is especially important because of its connections to the religious and spiritual as well as the sort of infrapolitical views of Cuban political-economy in which race and culture are not only imbricated but constitutive and inequitably remunerative. This book will be an enduring and leading work in anthropology, Black studies, gender and feminist studies, and Cuban studies.” - Jafari S. Allen, author of There’s a Disco Ball Between Us: A Theory of Black Gay Life

"Maya Berry's analysis of Cuban rumba is riveting." - Yvonne Daniel, Medical Anthropology Quarterly

"Defending Rumba in Havana  is a wonderful contribution to the field of anthropology, ethnomusicology, feminist studies and African religious studies." - Tony Kail, Anthropology Book Forum

"This book is field-defining and a boon for anthropologists and scholars of Cuban studies, Black studies, feminist studies, performance studies, religious studies, and dance studies. ... Run, don't walk—or better yet, dance—to get a copy and behold the brilliance and heart in page after page, step after step." - Elizabeth Schwall, Journal of Anthropological Research