Esu by Toyin Falola (Editor)This is the most extensive book on Esu, also known in different locations as Eleda, Exu, Cxu Eleggua, Cxu Elegbara, Legba, Elegba, Elegbera, or Odara. He is the ¿divine messenger,¿ central to the understanding of Yoruba religion and worldview, as well as their various manifestations and related orisa traditions in the African diaspora¿such as Candomblé, Vodou, and Santería/Lukumi.
Esu and Ifa (divination with all its sacred texts) or Orunmila (the god of divination) rank as the most widespread and the most worshipped of all the deities. Both Esu and Ifa/Orunmila hold the Yoruba cosmic system together. Esu is now part of what some may label as the Black Atlantic religion; part of the attempt to recover African religions in other lands; as well as part of the use of religion for survival. As the book points out, in Esu¿s ability to migrate to other lands, he becomes part of transatlantic history, but more so of the tension between relocation and history, between the violence that led to the forced migrations of people and the long healing process of reconciliation with living in strange lands that later became new homelands.
A Ki I by Oyekan OwomoyelaThis collection of Yoruba proverbs is the most complete and authoritative study that has ever been made available to the reading public and the scholarly community. It is written in standard modern Yoruba orthography, offering both the contracted and uncontracted forms of the entries, with fastidious attention to tonal language.