Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn Updated and Expanded Edition (Comparative Studies in Religion and Society)

Vodou is among the most misunderstood and maligned of the world's religions. Mama Lola shatters the stereotypes by offering an intimate portrait of Vodou in everyday life. Drawing on a decade-long friship with Mama Lola, a Vodou priestess, Karen McCarthy Brown tells tales spanning five generations of Vodou healers in Mama Lola's family, beginning with an African ancestor and ing with Mama Lola's daughter Maggie, a recent initiate and the designated heir to her Brooklyn-based healing practice. Out of these stories, in which dream and vision flavor everyday experience and the Vodou spirits guide decision making, Vodou emerges as a religion focused on healing brought about by ming broken relationships between the living, the dead, and the Vodou spirits. Mama Lola is also an important experiment in feminist ethnographic writing designed to address current questions in the field. Brown begins with the assumption that ethnography is not so much a science as a social art form rooted in human relationships, and as such it is open to moral and aesthetic questions as well as to those more routinely addressed to it. Weaving several of her own voices—analytic, descriptive, and personal—with the voices of her subjects in alternate chapters of straightforward ethnography and ethnographic fiction, Brown presents herself as a character in Mama Lola's world and allows the reader to evaluate her interactions there. Mama Lola's story thus rises from a chorus of equally authoritative voices. Deeply exploring the role of women in religious practices and the related themes of family and of religion and social change, Brown provides a rich context in which to understand the authority that urbanHaitian womenexercise in the home and in the Vodou temple. A broad range of general readers and scholars will find insights and new understandings in this startlingly original work. Author Biography: Karen McCarthy Brown is Professor of the Sociology and Anthropology of Religion at the Graduate and Theological Schools of Drake University. "Karen McCarthy Brown's classic book shatters stereotypes of Vodou by offering an intimate portrait of African-based religion in everyday life. She explores the importance of women's religious practices along with related themes of family and of social change. Weaving several of her own voices--analytic, descriptive, and personal--with the voices of her subjects in alternate chapters of traditional ethnography and ethnographic fiction, Brown presents herself as a character in Mama Lola's world and allows the reader to evaluate her interactions there. Startlingly original, Brown's work endures as an important experiment in ethnography as a social art form rooted in human relationships. A new preface, epilogue, bibliography, and a collection of family photographs tell the story of the effect of the book's publication on Mama Lola's life."--Publisher's description Frontmatter PREFACE TO THE 2001 EDITION (page ix) PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION (page xvii) INTRODUCTION (page 1) 1. Joseph Binbin Mauvant (page 21) 2. Azaka (page 35) 3. Raise That Woman's Petticoat (page 79) 4. Ogou (page 93) 5. The Baka Made from Jealousy (page 141) 6. Kouzinn (page 155) 7. Dreams and Promises (page 203) 8. Ezili (page 219) 9. Sojème, Sojème (page 259) 10. Danbala (page 271) 11. Plenty Confidence (page 311) 12. Gede (page 329) AFTERWORD (page 383) GLOSSARY OF HAITIAN CREOLE TERMS (page 403) BIBLIOGRAPHY (page 407) INDEX (page 415) Vodou is among the most misunderstood and maligned of the world's religions. "Mama Lola" shatters the stereotypes by offering an intimate portrait of Vodou in everyday life. Drawing on a decade-long friendship with Mama Lola, a Vodou priestess, Brown tells tales spanning five generations of Vodou healers in Mama Lola's family. 46 illustrations.