num_pages: 440
description: Karen McCarthy Brown's classic book shatters stereotypes of Vodou by offering an intimate portrait of African-based religion in everyday life. She explores the importance of women's religious practices along with related themes of family and of social change. Weaving several of her own voices--analytic, descriptive, and personal--with the voices of her subjects in alternate chapters of traditional ethnography and ethnographic fiction, Brown presents herself as a character in Mama Lola's world and allows the reader to evaluate her interactions there. Startlingly original, Brown's work endures as an important experiment in ethnography as a social art form rooted in human relationships. A new preface, epilogue, bibliography, and a collection of family photographs tell the story of the effect of the book's publication on Mama Lola's life.
language: English
title: Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn
titlecomplete: Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn
genres: History, Religion, Sociology, Spirituality, Biography, School, Ethnography, Nonfiction, Academic, Anthropology
ratings_count: 1232
series: Comparative Studies in Religion and Society
awards: awardedAt: 694252800000
name: Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing
publisher: University of California Press