Karen McCarthy Brown is Professor of the Sociology and Anthropology of Religion at the Graduate and Theological
Schools of Drew University.
Review
"A remarkable intellectual trip. . . . A necessary mirror and map for any outsider who wants to understand
Vodou and, by extension, Haiti."
--Amy Wilentz, Miami Herald
"The most stunning interrogation to date of the limits of knowledge. . . . The activity of reading, telling,
or remembering in these pages jolts us out of the comforts of received polemic, as Brown questions our conventional
ways of thinking about Haiti and Vodou and about the issues of race and sex. . . . 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
"Beautifully written . . . she has written a life story that's full of feeling."--Constance Casey, Los
Angeles Times
"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
The University of California Press Web Site, April, 2001
Summary
This work "focuses on the religious life of Marie Therese Alourdes Macena Margaux Kowalski, a transplanted
Haitian manbo who serves the Voodoo spirits. . . . {Brown combines the story of her own} relationship with the
priestess and her spiritual family with a fictionalized account of Alourdes' own family history over five generations.
. . . The chapters that alternate with the family history trace the pattern of Alourdes' relationships with the
spirits she serves, the community of worshippers, her extended family, and the author herself. . . . {Brown} eventually
concluded that 'the only way I could hope to understand the psychodrama of Voodoo was to open my own life to the
ministrations of Alourdes.'That decision opened the way for her full initiation into Voodoo."(J Am Acad Relig)
