Vodou in Haitian life and culture
Subtitle: invisible powers
By: [edited by] Claudine Michel and Patrick Bellegarde-Smith
Contributors: Michel, Claudine; Bellegarde-Smith, Patrick
Edition: 1st ed
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2006
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 242
Subjects: Voodooism; Haiti -- Religious life and customs
Other titles: Vodoo in Haitian life and culture
Description: This book introduces readers to the practice of Vodou and helps deconstruct and destroy stereotypes which have survived for hundreds of years. The authors in the collection--from Karen McCarthy Brown to Gerdes Fleurant to Leslie Desmangles--are leading scholars in the rapidly growing field of Vodou Studies. Tackling a wide range of Vodou practices and images, the essays within work to introduce readers to the history and practice of this religion, and to correct the fiction of Vodou which has been circulating as fact. The book focuses specifically on the role Vodou plays in Haiti, the country in which it has its strongest following, examining the influence it has on spiritual beliefs, cultural practices, national identity, popular culture, writing and art. By looking in detail at the beliefs and practices in one country, the reader will begin to understand this unique religion and the multiple domains in which it operates.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index
Table of contents: title: Afro-Caribben spirituality: a Haitian case study / Karen McCarthy Brown; title: Vodou in Haiti: way of life and mode of survival / Claudine Michel; title: African interpretations of the Christian cross in vodou / Leslie Gerald Desmangles; title: The song of freedom: vodou, conscientization and popular culture in Haiti / Gerdès Fleurant; title: Yon moso twal nan bwa (a piece of cloth on wood): the drapo vodou in myths of origin / Anna Wexler; title: "The Jew" in the Haitian imagination: pre-modern anti-Judaism in the post-modern Caribbean / Elizabeth A. McAlister - Resisting freedom: cultural factors in democracy-the case for Haiti / Patrick Bellegarde-Smith; title: The Haiti-New Orleans vodou connection: Zora Neale Hurston as initiate observer / Richard Brent Turner; title: Water in their eyes, dust on their land: heat and illness in a Haitian town / Pierre Minn; title: How Houngans use the light from distant stars / LeGrace Benson; title: Vodou in Haitian literature / Carrol F. Coates; title: It's all for you, Sen jak! / Donald J. Cosentino