With Aldon Nielson, the editors of this volume agree that "the middle passage may be the great repressed signifier of American historical consciousness." The essays collected here illustrate that the repressed memory of crossing lives not only in the academy, in oral traditions, and in the stone walls of slave fortresses but in the liturgy as well as the spiritual and religious practices throughout the African Diaspora. Descendants of African slaves living in the wide Diaspora are bearers of an "unforgetful strength" that endures and endures, manifesting itself in every aspect of culture. Black writers, artists and musicians in the New World have tested the limits of cultural memory, finding in it the inspiration to "speak the unspeakable."
