Luisah Teish

Luisah Teish ( ; also known as Iyanifa Fajembola Fatunmise) is a teacher and an author, most notably of Jambalaya: The Natural Woman's Book of Personal Charms and Practical Rituals. She is an Iyanifa and Oshun chief in the Yoruba Lucumi tradition.

Life Luisah Teish is an African-American, born in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her father, Wilson Allen, Sr. was an African Methodist Episcopal whose parents had been two-generation servants and only one generation away from slavery. Her mother, Serena "Rene" Allen, was a Catholic, of Haitian, French, and Choctaw heritage. Her original ancestry also includes Yoruba West African.

In the late 1960s, Teish was a dancer in Katherine Dunham's group, where she learned and performed traditional African and Caribbean dances. She led the dance troupe of the Black Artists Group (BAG) in St. Louis after the departure of BAG's first dance leader, Georgia Collins.

In the late 1970s she became an initiate and priestess of the Lucumi religion, She currently resides in Oakland, California.

One author said she was the "perhaps the most well known.. Yoruba priestess.. of the [San Francisco] Bay Area" (2010). Another author characterized her as "..well known internationally in Goddess circles as a writer and ritual-maker." Soul Between the Lines: Freeing Your Creative Spirit Through Writing (with Dorothy Randall Gray) (1998) Avon Books , Eye of the Storm (1998) E P Dutton , Jump Up: Good Times Throughout the Season with Celebrations from Around the World (2000) Conari Press , What Don’t Kill Is Fattening Revisited: Twenty Years of Poetry, Prose, and Myth (2002) Orikire Publications Zulu Shaman: Dreams, Prophecies, and Mysteries (with Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa and Stephen Larsen) (2003) Destiny Books (New Edition of Song of the Stars) ,