Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

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.

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.

This book takes place in new york and tells a talke of a voodoo priestess and her family lineage. The narritives and decrriptives are amazing. Living in new orleans I can see some of the similarities between voodoo in newyork and voodoo in new orleans, and the differences also. If you want an excelent introduction to voodoo then check out this volume, you will not be dissapointed in the least.

What a journey! This is one of those rare books that not only tells a great story, but actualy envelops the reader and takes them on an incredible spiritual journey. The author writes in a style which is both familiar and confortable. When she describes places, rituals, or people, the reader feels like they are there, seeing these things with the author. As for Mama Lola herself, what a woman! Mama Lola, Alourdes, is presented as a kind, strong, knowledgeble, and powerful priestess. When the author writes Mama Lola's words, you can feel as if you are actually hearing her speak to you. The words along with several photographs give this book more than the reader could ever imagine. I will cherish this book as long as I live.

I was given this book by a dear God sister of mine and fell in love with it right away. Mama Lola is a story of a beautiful, powerfull, witty, charming, and loveable priestess who came from Haiti to live in New York. The story starts with her ancestor Josef Binbin Mauvaunt and works its way through her family line to her and her children all the while intermingling stories of lif in Brooklyn. The author is a student and close friend of Mama Lola's and tells the story from her perspective after hearing the stories from Mama Lola. The author also relates many first hand accounts from trips on which she accompanied Mama Lola as well as rituals she attended including her own initiation in Haiti. If you want to know about some of the VooDoo traditions or perhaps just looking for a great story then you have found it!

This is an engrossing and moving read that compares with such books as "Woman Who Glows In The Dark" and "Macumba." It is about a very wonderful, gifted woman who is a Mambo, a Haitian Vudou healer and spiritualist. The story is about her life, her ancestors, her spirits and her relationships. The book is rich with insights.