The methods used in researching and writing this book have roots in the work of other scholars. I think of myself as working within a tradition of interpretive anthropology. According to Clifford Geertz, human are "suspended in webs of significance" they themselves created. We can speak of culture in a general sense (that is, I can talk about Haitian culture) because human beings in relation, over time, tend to evolve shared styles of web-spinning. The individual life - Alourdes's life, for instance - while open to infinite variation, is nevetherless recognizable as a version of one or more of these traditional web-spinning styles we call cultures. Even more to the point, such a view makes interpretation both the subject matter and the end product of ethnographic work. What the ethnographer studies is how people create meaning or significance in their lives, how they interpret objects and events. An ethnographic study such as Mama Lola is thus an exercise in bridge building. It is an interpretation within one web-spinning tradition (in this case, my own) of the interpretations of people who follow a largely different aesthetic in their pinning (in this case, Haitians).
A corollary of this position is that the people who are being studied should be allowed to speak for themselves whenever possible, for they are the only true experts on themselves. That is why I quote Alourdes frequently, and often, at length. In passing her stories along, I also reproduce her way of speaking - English, wedded to the structure, rhythm, and cadence of Haitian Creole - to bring the reader a fuller sense of her and of the creative cultural mix in which she lives.
In Mama Lola, I am most interested in telling rich, textured stories that bring Alourdes and her religion alone. Rather than simply trying to refute the negative stereotypes often associated with Vodou, I have chosen to enter the public discussion of Vodou by another route: constructing a portrait of this religion as it is lived by Alourdes and the people closest to her. My aim is to create an intimate portrait of three-dimensional people who are not stand-ins for an abstraction such as "The Haitian people" but rather are deeply religious individuals with particular histories and rich interior lives, individuals who do not live out their religion in unreflective, formulaic ways but instead struggle with it, become confused, and sometimes even contradict themselves. In other words, my aim is to create a portrait of Vodou embedded in the vicissitudes of particular lives.
A corollary of this position is that the people who are being studied should be allowed to speak for themselves whenever possible, for they are the only true experts on themselves. That is why I quote Alourdes frequently, and often, at length. In passing her stories along, I also reproduce her way of speaking - English, wedded to the structure, rhythm, and cadence of Haitian Creole - to bring the reader a fuller sense of her and of the creative cultural mix in which she lives.
In Mama Lola, I am most interested in telling rich, textured stories that bring Alourdes and her religion alone. Rather than simply trying to refute the negative stereotypes often associated with Vodou, I have chosen to enter the public discussion of Vodou by another route: constructing a portrait of this religion as it is lived by Alourdes and the people closest to her. My aim is to create an intimate portrait of three-dimensional people who are not stand-ins for an abstraction such as "The Haitian people" but rather are deeply religious individuals with particular histories and rich interior lives, individuals who do not live out their religion in unreflective, formulaic ways but instead struggle with it, become confused, and sometimes even contradict themselves. In other words, my aim is to create a portrait of Vodou embedded in the vicissitudes of particular lives.
... Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess In Brooklyn, Karen McCarthy Brown
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