Vodou in Haitian Life and Culture: Invisible Powers [Hardcover]

This collection introduces readers to the history and practice of the Vodou religion, and corrects many misconceptions. The book focuses specifically on the role Vodou plays in Haiti, where it has its strongest following, examining its influence on spiritual beliefs, cultural practices, national identity, popular culture, writing and art.Introduction Afro-Caribbean Spirituality: A Hatian Case Study - Karen McCarthy Brown Voudou in Haiti: Way of Life and Mode of Survival - Claudine Michel African Interpretations of the Christian Vodou Cross - Leslie G. Desmangles Resisting Freedom: Cultural Factors in Democracy: The Case for Haiti - Patrick Bellegarde-Smith The Jew in the Haitian Imagination: Pre-Modern Anti-Judaism the Post-Modern Caribbean - Elizabeth A McAlister The Song of Freedom: Vodoun, Conscientization and Popular Culture in Haiti - Gerdes Fleurant Water in their Eyes, Dust on their Land: Heat and Illness in a Haitian Town - Pierre Minn I am Going to See Where My Oungan Is : The Artistry of a Haitian Vodou Flagmaker - Anna Wexler How Hougans Use the Light from Distant Stars - LeGrace Benson The Haiti-New Orleans Vodou Connection: Zora Neale Hurston as Initiate Observer - Richard Brent Turner

Les invisibles are the powers that have sustained Haitians through centuries of exploitation, impoverishment, and terror. This collection of essays by leading scholars has the great merit of showing how Vodou works as a healing force that thoroughly penetrates Haitian culture and social life. From ritual temple to street festival, from song and dance to art and literature, from democracy to social justice, from Haiti to New Orleans, each essay addresses a different aspect of Vodou's living presence. Assembled together in this volume, they constitute a vital whole that provides broad access to a living religion and way of life that has all too often been maligned and misunderstood.

- Patrick Taylor, Chair of the Division of Humanities, York lÓ"