In the late 1930s, Zora Neale Hurston toured Jamaica and Haiti on a Guggenheim Fellowship collecting folklore and voodoo materials for this book, published in 1938. The book is in three sections, covering her views of and experiences in Jamaica, people and politics of Haiti, and finally her initiation and participation in the world of Haitian voodoo. Zora maintains her usual stance of the involved, inquisitive participant, and her initiation into the ways of voodoo was, and is, both remarkable and engaging. From sexism in Jamaica to threats about her voodoo investigations, from commentary on her role as ethnographer to criticism of previous white studies of voodoo, the book is wild, and collects a huge range of important black cultural practices. Zora left the field hurriedly in 1938, desperately ill, convinced she might die, and sure that she had been 'hexed' for delving too deep into the world of 'bad' (petro) voodoo...have a read of one of the most important pieces of black folklore research of the 1930s. Parlay cheval ou! Ah bo bo!
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Sounds interesting!
ReplyDeleteSquirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary by David Sedaris
ReplyDeletemags and Mom
Hmmnm - interesting.
ReplyDeleteI want to get that one, "Squirrel seeks Chipmunk"!
ReplyDeleteBeen trying to get a copy of this book for years...now have it and I'm going to read the heck out of it! Love Vodoun, so it's going to be an experience!
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