Deeply exploring the role of women in religious practices and the related themes of family and of religion and social change, Brown provides a rich context in which to understand the authority that urban Haitian women exercise in the home and in the Vodou temple.
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.
This book and accompanying compact disc provide a rare excursion in the innovative ways a community of Haitian migrants to South Florida has maintained religious traditions and familial connections. It demonstrates how religion, ritual, and aesthetic practices affect lives on both sides of the Caribbean, and it debunks myths of exotic and primitive vodou (often spelled "voodoo"), which have long been used against Haitians. As Karen Richman shows, Haitians at home and in migrant settlements make ingenious use of audio and video tapes to extend the boundaries of their ritual spaces and to reinforce their moral and spiritual anchors to one another. The book and CD were produced in collaboration to give the reader intimate access to this new expressive media. Sacred songs are recorded on tapes and circulated among the communities. Migrants are able to hear not only the performance sounds--drumming, singing, and chatter--but also a description, as narrators tell of offerings, sacrifices, prayers, and the exchange of possessions. Spirits who inhabit the bodies of ritual actors are aware of the recording devices and personally address the absent migrants, sometimes warning them of their financial obligations to family members in Haiti. The migrants’ dependence on their home village is dramatically reinforced while their economic independence is restricted. Using standard ethnographic methods, Richman’s work illuminates the connections among social organization, power, production, ritual, and aesthetics. With its transnational perspective, it shows how labor migration has become one of Haiti’s chief economic exports. A volume in the series New World Diasporas, edited by Kevin A. Yelvington
Drive the beautiful California coast, ride a cable car in San Francisco, be awed by the grandeur of Yosemite, visit the sidewalk of stars on Hollywood Boulevard, and taste your way through the wine country, while staying in boutique hotels and romantic country inns - the cream of the crop from the vast array of places to stay in California.
The best bed and breakfasts, inns, and itineraries in Ireland, a guide that encompasses a wide range of charming accommodations to suit any price range, complete with personal descriptions of each establishment, line drawings, and locator maps to help travelers plan inn-to-inn trips.
This wonderful guide to the Emerald Isle is specifically written for those who want to experience a slice of Irish life staying as guests in country houses, farms, and family run hotels. There can be no better way to meet the warm-hearted, friendly Irish people than to stay with them in their homes.
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