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The present volume begins this way, which submerges us in that universe of traditions bearing an invaluable testimonial value, repositories of solid documental support (they have been extracted from books of Ifá), where the reader will be able to find wisdom, depth ideas, useful advice, interpretation of the ancestral issue; a very peculiar philosophy of life; the discovery of a substantial and rich African custom, which is the le-gacy of the Cuban culture and, also, the review that many of the deities of such a religion wanted to bequeath us through their earthly links and their connections, here, in the earth.

In this book, Oyěwùmí extends her path-breaking thesis that in Yorùbá society, construction of gender is a colonial development since the culture exhibited no gender divisions in its original form. Taking seriously indigenous modes and categories of knowledge, she applies her finding of a non-gendered ontology to the social institutions of Ifá, motherhood, marriage, family and naming practices. Oyěwùmí insists that contemporary assertions of male dominance must be understood, in part, as the work of local intellectuals who took marching orders from Euro/American mentors and colleagues. In exposing the depth of the coloniality of power, Oyěwùmí challenges us to look at the worlds we inhabit, anew.