Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn Volume 4 - Paperback

Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn Volume 4

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 35 year long friendship 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 ending with Claudine Michel's account of working with Mama Lola after the Haitian earthquake.

Five Generations of Vodou Healing Tradition

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 mending broken relationships between the living, the dead, and the Vodou spirits. This ethnographic study provides unprecedented access to authentic Vodou religious practices as lived and experienced by practitioners in Brooklyn's Haitian community.

Women's Authority in Haitian Religious Practice

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 urban Haitian women exercise in the home and in the Vodou temple. This anthropological work combines oral history with participant observation to document how female spiritual leaders maintain and adapt Caribbean religious traditions in diaspora communities.

Academic Ethnography and Comparative Religion

This volume represents significant scholarship in the anthropology of religion, Caribbean studies, and feminist anthropology. The long-term fieldwork relationship between researcher and subject offers insights into ethnographic methodology while documenting authentic religious practices often misrepresented in popular culture. The text serves graduate studies in religious studies, cultural anthropology, and African diaspora research.

About the Authors

Karen McCarthy Brown (1942-2015) was Professor Emerita of the Sociology and Anthropology of Religion at the Graduate and Theological Schools of Drew University. Claudine Michel is Professor Emeritus of Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.