Rating: 
Summary: At least the ethnographer is honest about herself!
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Touching Spirits
Review: MAMA LOLA: A VODOU PRIESTESS IN BROOKLYN by Karen McCarthy Brown is a brilliant book. The odd chapters are stories about the vodou priestess's family and heritage. The even chapters are about different lwa (loa or spirits) of the Vodou religion and relate in some way to the chapter that precedes it. Brown does the unthinkable, she leaves her anthropological observer roll and becomes an initiate into the religion, but it works. She is able to explain the relationship between the vodou adherent and the spirits in terms of what happens in the world of Haiti and the Haitian community in the United States. Her outsider's eye gives us logical explanations and her part as a participant allows the reader to feel empathy and emotion for the devotees of a much misunderstood religion.
This book includes a Glossary of Haitian Creole Terms, Bibliography, and Index. There are a few select and choice black and white photos in the book, which bring the text some added meaning.
This book is highly recommended for those studying comparative religion and those with an interest in religions of the African diaspora.
Rating: 
Summary: Engaging, accessible insight into Vodou
Review: Many of the books I'd read previously on Vodou were either dull and static, or hyped-up and commercial, so to read this was quite refreshing. It is an anthropological study, a biography, a basic history of Haiti, and an insight into the much-maligned religion, all rolled into one. Despite having been written by an anthropologist as part of her study, it is a touching account of faith, friendship and overcoming cultural barriers. Anyone who wants to know about the 'real' religion should read this.
Rating:
Summary: Engaging, accessible insight into Vodou
Review: Many of the books I'd read previously on Vodou were either dull and static, or hyped-up and commercial, so to read this was quite refreshing. It is an anthropological study, a biography, a basic history of Haiti, and an insight into the much-maligned religion, all rolled into one. Despite having been written by an anthropologist as part of her study, it is a touching account of faith, friendship and overcoming cultural barriers. Anyone who wants to know about the 'real' religion should read this.
Rating:
Summary: You can't help but love this family!
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: A book which seems like home
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Human
Review: 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.
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