Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn

Walking between the worlds Karen McCarthy Brown has penned a masterpiece! Mama Lola, known to family and friends as Alourdes, is a Mambo, an initiated priestess of Voudou who earns a modest living by serving her immigrant countrymen in America as a traditional healer and by conducting Haitian Voudou rites in her Brooklyn home. In 1978, Brown, then a professor of religion at New Jersey's Drew University first encountered Mama Lola while doing an ethnographic survey of the local Haitian population. Intrigued by the priestess and her misunderstood and maligned tradition, Brown became at first a friend, then a member of Mama Lola's extended family and finally an enthusiastic participant in many of the rites that comprise the corpus of Voudoun devotional life. Mama Lola, her daughter Maggie, their children and their ancestors, and the 'Lwa' (spirits) who frequently 'possess' them are an engaging, wonderfully diverse crowd: deeply spiritual, profoundly thoughtful and often humorous characters marvelously skilled in surviving conditions of extreme deprivation and oppression and in adapting to the conditions of life (or, afterlife) in the strange world of urban America. By the time I had completed this delightful book, I felt myself deeply involved in Mama Lola's life and that of her extended family. Brown's writing is textured and a pleasure to read. The author goes far out on a limb, leaving her observer role and social scientist expertise and becomes an initiate into the religion, wedding the 'etic' of academia to the 'emic' of an ecstatic, profoundly sensual, Earth-centered religiosity. The arrangement of the text adds to its readability, with odd chapters offering stories about Mama Lola's family and heritage and even chapters devoted to the pantheon of lwa (spirits) of the Voudou tradition. A glossary of Voudou terms has been added, which is indispensible to readers new to the subject. Students and scholars of Haiti, the African Diaspora and African religious traditions will enjoy and benefit from this work immensely. I recommend it as well to the general public for a most worthwhile reading adventure.

MAMA LOLA: A VODOU PRIESTESS IN BROOKLYN by Karen McCarthy Brown is a brilliant book. The odd chapters are stories about the vodou priestess's family and heritage. The even chapters are about different lwa (loa or spirits) of the Vodou religion and relate in some way to the chapter that precedes it. Brown does the unthinkable, she leaves her anthropological observer roll and becomes an initiate into the religion, but it works. She is able to explain the relationship between the vodou adherent and the spirits in terms of what happens in the world of Haiti and the Haitian community in the United States. Her outsider's eye gives us logical explanations and her part as a participant allows the reader to feel empathy and emotion for the devotees of a much misunderstood religion.This book includes a Glossary of Haitian Creole Terms, Bibliography, and Index. There are a few select and choice black and white photos in the book, which bring the text some added meaning.This book is highly recommended for those studying comparative religion and those with an interest in religions of the African diaspora.

In most ethnographies, the reader must dig around to find out about the writer. In this book, McCarthy Brown is true to herself and says who she is--an outsider, drawn to the power and community of these Haitian immigrants. If anthropology is the study of human cultures and communities, this author provides us with an honest attempt to understand another's life with all the mysteries and ambiguities intact.Mama Lola, as she serves her spirits and makes good luck for her spiritual godchildren, embodies the history of Haitian women and their creative mastery of many worlds within the New World. All the stories that Mama Lola relates "follow a line from mother to daughter" and emphasize the role of the matrilineal connections between Alourdes and her descendants (p. 16). The matriarch serves a special role in preserving the extended "family" of vodou practitioners. In Karen McCarthy Brown's ethnography, Mama Lola is the center of a complex web of relationships connecting West Africa to Haiti to Brooklyn to other points extending even farther. The reader discovers the rural world of Haiti and the urban world of New York City through an alternation of personal narratives, interviews, and imaginative fictional interludes about the ancestors and the spirits.

I found this to be one of the most fascinating books I've ever read, on any subject! The author's relationship with Mama Lola is the heart of this moving portrait of the Haitian immigrant community in Brooklyn. This book should be required reading for the scores of folks still harboring negative stereotypes of Vodou (please, people, forget all that sensationalistic Hollywood garbage!); it will take its place besides Luisah Teish's works as the definitive portraits of Vodou as a strong, empowering force for women. Brown herself was initiated into the Vodou community while on a trip to Haiti with Mama Lola and her family in 1981; her life has never been the same! Yours won't either, after reading this wonderful book. Required reading for all serious students of comparative religion and women's studies!

This book does give a good feel for the emotions and personal aspects of Voodoo/Vodun. If you are out to learn about the secrets and mysteries of the religion, you will be dissappointed. This book describes the lives of people who practise the religion. After reading this book you will have a feel for one woman's difficult life. It has a more biographical than how-to quality about voodoo. If you are interested in Haiti, Voodoo/Vodun or santeria it is a must read.