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Summary: Mama Lola I feel like I know you
Review: A friend recently reccomended this book to me. She lent me her copy and after only the first few pages I was hooked. This is a warm and compassionante story of a beautiful and powerfull priestess. Anyone who is looking for a book that will tantalize and fill them with joy should buy this one.
This book will keep you wanting more all the time.
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Summary: Anthropological Insight
Review: Dr Brown provides a decent introduction to the collection of haitian traditions some call voodoo. I live in a haitian immigrant community in the Dominican Republic. I found this book useful in starting to understand a bit about what goes on every time there is a party for a saint.From the standpoint of Social Anthropology, Dr. Brown made several interesting decisions about how to represent her work with her informant. She does not build a wall between her own life and that of her informant, and she also has chosen to give voice to a narrative form that she believes is more accurate than spouting off facts or "expert" analysis. For a good comparison, see the way that Philipe Borgeousis' informant is represented in the book "In Search Of Respect." Dr. Brown's combination of life experience and "enlightened"-- perhaps women's studies influenced-- ethnographic methods make this an interesting read.
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Summary: Fascinating portrait of a strong, vibrant Vodou priestess
Review: 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!
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Summary: a wonderful book...
Review: 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.
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Summary: Love in a Book
Review: 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!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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