Customer Reviews

A New Orleans Voudou Priestess: The Legend and Reality of Marie Laveau

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The research and details in this book are incredible. Dates, names, addresses - this book is a must-read for anyone interested in the life of Marie Laveau, or just New Orleans history. I'm taking the book on my next trip to the Crescent city to visit some of the places Long mentions in her book. Very well documented and extremely readable.

Carolyn Long's latest work, like her earlier Spiritual Merchants, is an fascinating piece of historical detective work. Sifting through the legends that surround Marie Laveau--and briefly Voodoo in general--she has produced a readable, highly-accurate biography. Those who are hoping to find titillating accounts of midnight Voodoo orgies within its pages will be disappointed. Instead, what readers will discover are the facts behind a woman who has been alternately vilified and lionized by the American public. Voudou Priestess demystifies Laveau and gives future scholars as well as general readers a firm foundation upon which to base their understandings of Voudou and its ministers.

Carolyn Morrow Long's portrait of the elusive but everpresent Marie Laveau is an awesome feat of detective work, a painstaking investigation of all the available church, court, government, and anecdotal records. In conveying her very thorough research in a clear, orderly, and graceful style, Long has produced as comprehensive a picture of this fabled woman as we are likely to get. Her account is definitive, and is likely to remain so for years to come.

--Stanford Pritchard, Middlebury, VT

If you like reading about American History and you're looking for something exotic, look no further; you've come to the right place. In addition to the above, Carolyn Morrow Long's book, "A New Orleans Voudou Priestess," is extremely well written and thoroughly researched, not often the case in these days of 30 second sound bites and mindless talk shows. Author Long begins as is the case with scientific researchers with telling us how she conducted her research and what she found, both truth and rumor. Also of great value to us are the facts of the Louisiana Teritory's various governments, their ethnic makeup, and primary languages. We learn, too, of the waves of new immigrants and the ease of assimilation, including slaves and free people of color, both African-born and Creole (i.e.,Louisiana-born individuals of whatever ethnicity).

"New Orleans Voudou Priestess" is organized in content-labeled chapters and includes a bibliography, a helpful guide for further study. Chapter notes and many references to the Louisiana Writers Project (LWP) organized as one of many such projects during the great depression are also invaluable resources. Of course, the book has bountiful references to Voudou in its many forms and its proximity to other beliefs, African and Haitian as well as Roman Catholicism.

In all, Carolyn Morrow Long has produced a five star book for scholars, but just as important she has produced a five star book of clean, clear prose, of accessible readability for laymen. Hurrah! for her and good for all of us who love American history.

This is an interesting book that is not about Marie Laveau so much as it is about the times and the milieu of Marie Laveaux. Altogether, from 287 pages, I would hazard a guess that collectively about 5 pages are about Marie Laveau. This is a book to read if you are interested in New Orleans and New Orleans vodoo in particular, but you will surely be disappointed, as I was, if you go into this book thinking it will be about Marie Laveau.

If you are interested in finding out more about Marie Laveau perhaps another book would be a better place to start. The first half reads like a text book and is rather boring when it comes to going through all the historic documents of relatives and grandparents in great detail. I do appreciate the author trying to find out the truth rather than just hand me down urban myths but it seems it could have been done in a different manner. This is interesting stuff to work with and to me this writing style didn't capture it. While there is a lot of New Orleans historical background that is interesting it also seems to occupy most of the book. I also didn't think it was necessary to go into details about the prisoners hangings either.... the second half of the book holds your attention the most. If you can force yourself through the first half, hopefully you will finally get to the truth about Marie Laveau. Unfortunately for me there was so much information that the author tries to disprove I am still confused about who the real Marie was.

I appreciate the fact that there is a lot of legend and reality to sort through when trying to write an academic book about Marie Laveau. Unfortunately, once Long was done sorting through the legend and the reality, there doesn't appear to have been a lot to work with in terms of unraveling the legend/myth of Marie Laveau. The book is largely speculation on who Marie Laveau may have been, what she may have done, and questions if she really did it or not.

During the course of the book, while attempting to construct a coherent picture of the reality of Marie Laveau, Long interjects elements of prior works on Marie Laveau that make certain claims, such as Zora Neale Hurston's work on "hoodoo" and Jewell Rhodes' "Voodoo Dreams" in order to debunk the mythology that they promote. This is admirable and necessary in the work of a true historian, but unfortunately they're awkwardly placed and without prior knowledge of the content of either of these books, it is difficult for the reader to appreciate Long's argument.

Further to the literary criticism, the book spends an inordinate amount of time focusing on the social dynamic of 19th century New Orleans which is very interesting and necessary to a discussion of Marie Laveau and the voodoo culture, but not necessarily to the extent that it was utilized in this work.

The book was interesting for the nuggets of information on Marie Laveau that do emerge from Long's work, but it doesn't represent any substantial scholarship. Sometimes there just isn't enough information to write a coherent, cohesive work on a subject. In that case, it's best to reduce it to an article or a monograph as opposed to padding the work to such an extent that the actual claimed subject of the work takes up a minimal part of the whole body of work.