Product Description

"Spiritual Shackles" is an episodic story about love gained and love lost. About history and history denied. About social complacency and social revolution. About blind faith and faith challenged. "Shackles" combines these ingredients into a suspenseful "gumbo" that will shake the ground beneath your feet.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2046732 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-01
• Released on: 2005-09-01
• Binding: Hardcover
• 518 pages

Customer Reviews

African American History and Storytelling At Its Finest
Author O. Ajamu Jumal penned a wonderful story filled with African American history from slavery to the present, that is filled with pertinent facts concerning the progression, successes and failures of our people.

Pasadena, California is the setting of Spiritual Shackles where African Americans migrated to from southern states in order to work for white people and make a better living for their families. In particular, Mother Vye and the abandoned children she cared for (with the exception of Stoney), were the thrust that drove the story. The five children whose lives Mama Vye had such a great impact were Narva, Jadi, Lionel, Rondell and Stoney who also lived in the beautiful house on Palisade Court.

Each era in history was represented in Spiritual Shackles, from the music, to the style of dress, as well as the awareness raised during that time. The Nation of Islam, Marcus Garvey, Muhammad Ali, Pentecostalism, and African Folklore interweaved through the pages of the book, most in intricate detail that painted a wonderful picture of the church fires, race riots, Malcolm X and Alex Haley's appearances, and the strange pink tea.

Spiritual Shackles is an African American history lesson that details the lives of the children that Mama Vye helped raise, as they grew up and found themselves on the paths each of their lives would take them.

I recommend Spiritual Shackles to anyone who loves reading about African American history and enjoys African Folklore. O. Ajamu Jumal is the griot extraordinaire.


Reviewed by Sharel E. Gordon-Love
APOOO BookClub

Shades of a Different God
Spiritual Shackles is a story of the bias in religious systems exposed when confronted with alternative beliefs, culture, mores, and symbolism especially as it results in diminishing "religious certainties." It is an intriguing interweave of characters which is decapitated, eviscerated, and fractured as we identify too close with ideology and logically have to examine the "complexion" of our convictions while reviewing a history that may not be as previous told or accepted.

Okeyo A. Jumal produced a good expository work that challenges the reader yet does not allow a neutral stance. The tempo of his work has ebbs and tides of an erratic sea!

The ending seemed out of sync with rest of the book. It appeared to have been too many loose ends to tie up and too little time to do it. The journey to the destination was too convoluted. The character Jadi, is the story. Let her be!

Reviewed by: Gail

Spiritual illumination
I enjoyed reading Spiritual Shackles from page one to the very end of page 501. Jumal transcends time and space to immerse the reader in a kaleidoscope of history. My five senses were reeling from the five spirits and the host of other souls that come alive to greet the reader, sending you on a most wonderful trip not soon forgotten. The storyline, depth, nature and the history allows the reader to understand how our lifeways are fused at the hip in our collective struggle to free our minds. So one should sit back and relax with a cup of tea (pink) and enjoy this beautifully written book.
Our journey in this life is defined by our ability to rise above the strange culture that has estranged us from our spirituality. Okeyo A. Jumal in his book Spiritual Shackles has meld the past, present and future of the African Diaspora. History as orally written by this griot comes alive to take the reader where the five senses of the metaphysical reveal the revelation of the seven seals that the bible allegorically speaks, clairvoyance and seership being the other two that make up the seven, thus revealing our desire to grasp our history of self. To cipher the knowledge of the journey in this odyssey one must be a palm tree as the character Mama Vye states and not an oak. You must be able to bend with the ever changing directional wind as the five main spirits joyously and painfully seek out to reclaim their redemption to Know Thyself. To travel in this time machine one must know the definition of the word catharsis, which is a technique used to relieve tension and anxiety by bringing repressed memories to consciousness. Repression can be compared to hypnotically induced amnesia, where individuals and groups of people are directed to forget specific information, then instructed to forget they have forgotten. Jumal's Mama Vye and Baba Zumbi use the powerful amulet necklaces to retrieve these memories, undoing and correcting the con in the manipulation thereby restoring the confidence which enlighten the reader to the sin of lies so that one can sincerely know of the painful and joyous truths in our history. One truly knows a griot has evolved to an oracle of illumination, so much so that Gnostic Sage should be bestowed upon Jumal. When you no longer are watching the lives unfold before you, because you have stepped off the time machine into the matrix of the history unfolding before your eyes...seership comes to mind. "We steal what a man (culture) has, then murders him to conceal the crime." Jumal eloquently returns the culture that has been stolen from the African Diaspora, so that the physical and mental genocide cannot be concealed any longer. I cried, laughed and loved essentially because of the metempsychosis or transmigration of my soul into the lives of the spirits of those souls who unveil a part of our history, so that I might free my mind from some of the shackles of deception.