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

Karen McCarthy Brown (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 5, 2001 | ISBN-10: 0520224752 | ISBN-13: 978-0520224759 | Edition: 1

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Brown befriends a Haitian vodou priestess who practices in her Brooklyn, N.Y., home. Photos.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Brown offers a sympathetic and vivid portrait of the lives of a group of women." -- Roland Littlewood, Political and Social Science

"I know of no other work about Vodou that can teach the uninitiated so fully what it means to know." -- Joan Dayan, Women's Review of Books

"Mama Lola provides an engaging, detailed, and sympathetic account of the world of Haitian Vodou." -- Eugene V. Gallagher, Journal of the American Academy of Religion

"[Brown] has written a life story that is full of feeling." -- Constance Casey, Los Angeles Times

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 440 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (November 5, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520224752
• ISBN-13: 978-0520224759
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #56,005 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #32 in Books > Gay & Lesbian > Biographies & Memoirs
  • #45 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Regional U.S. > Mid Atlantic

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A brilliant and compelling account of "walkers between the worlds", July 29, 2007

By 

William Courson "William Courson" (Montclair, New Jersey USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn Updated and Expanded Edition (Comparative Studies in Religion and Society) (Paperback)

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.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable, informative, well-written, September 7, 2003

By 

Elizabeth (United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn Updated and Expanded Edition (Comparative Studies in Religion and Society) (Paperback)

I read this book for a class, but found it very easy and enjoyable to do so. For many assigned books I have to force myself through them and not so at all with this one. Certainly, it is not meant to give a comprehensive look at Vodou and it doesn't do that. What it does do, though, is give someone with little or no knowledge of the religion a full and rich picture of the tradition. I very much appreciated the author's stance throughout the book that the spirits and the experiences of those in the book (eventually, including her own) were real. There was no questioning about whether the spirits "really" existed, but just the assumption that this was the reality for practioners of Vodou. One danger with ethnographic work is that the ethnographer is condescending when talking about those with whom she is working or studying, and this wasn't the case in the book. She seemed to view Alourdes and her family as equals and as friends.
Overall, I found the book interesting, not difficult to read (as is the case with many "academic" books), enjoyable and informative. It seems like it would be a suitable book for those interested in religion, vodou in particular, anthropology, ethnographic study, or those interested in Haiti.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You can't help but love this family!, October 4, 2004

By 

A. White "adynomoose" (New Orleans, La United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn Updated and Expanded Edition (Comparative Studies in Religion and Society) (Paperback)

Not really a book on Hatian Vodou. Mama Lola is more a family history and a description of what serving the spirits means to them.
Dr. Brown makes this amazing woman and her family come alive on the page.
Alourdes is all at once a devout woman, devoted mother, petulent and powerful woman. Her family is at once inspiring and beverage out your nose funny.
By the end of this edition, I found myself not only falling in love with Alourdes family, but with the spirits they so loyally serve.
A terrfic book if you want to understand what Vodou means to it's followers, what life is like for immigrant women and the pride and strength that comes from growing up in the poorest country in the Western hemisphere.