Mama LolaMama Lola
a Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn
Title rated 1 out of 5 stars, based on 1 ratings(1 rating)
Book, 1991
Current format, Book, 1991, , No Longer Available.Book, 1991
Current format, Book, 1991, , No Longer Available. Offered in 0 more formats"Brown weaves together fictional, biographical, and ethnological narratives into a moving account of the life of a Vodou community and its leader, Mama Lola. This book belies the stereotypes that still distort the image of this ancient religion in the academic as well as the popular mind."--Albert J. Raboteau, Princeton University
"An eloquent contribution to the emerging feminist paradigm of scholarship as engaged, embodied, and life-affirming."--Carol P. Christ, author of Laughter of Aphrodite
"A riveting narrative, rich in detail. Karen Brown brings a rare, well-informed regard to her interpretation of Haitian religious life."--Lawrence E. Sullivan, author of Icanchu's Drum: An Orientation to the Meaning of South American Religions
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, Karen McCarthy Brown tells tales spanning five generations of Vodou healers in Mama Lola's family, beginning with an African ancestor and ending 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 mending 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 voicesanalytic, descriptive, and personalwith 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 urban Haitian women exercise 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.
"An eloquent contribution to the emerging feminist paradigm of scholarship as engaged, embodied, and life-affirming."--Carol P. Christ, author of Laughter of Aphrodite
"A riveting narrative, rich in detail. Karen Brown brings a rare, well-informed regard to her interpretation of Haitian religious life."--Lawrence E. Sullivan, author of Icanchu's Drum: An Orientation to the Meaning of South American Religions
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, Karen McCarthy Brown tells tales spanning five generations of Vodou healers in Mama Lola's family, beginning with an African ancestor and ending 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 mending 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 voicesanalytic, descriptive, and personalwith 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 urban Haitian women exercise 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.
Title availability
About
Subject and genre
Details
Publication
- Berkeley : University of California Press, [1991], ©1991
Opinion
More from the community
Community lists featuring this title
There are no community lists featuring this title
Community contributions
There are no quotations from this title
There are no quotations from this title
From the community