Download or read book Voodoo Politics written by Nik Van Den and published by Austin Macauley Publishers. This book was released on 2022-10-31 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The lives of four unrelated people are caught up in changing events as Haiti is again racked by corruption and violence during a few days of a brutal struggle for power and regime change. A fast-paced novel that covers the tragic impact on a poor Haitian boy and his family who fight to survive in a world of unbelievable violence. A visiting businessman is kidnapped for ransom whilst an indulgent Catholic Bishop has to face his own demons and a dedicated local priest pays a heavy price. These seemingly unrelated events are initiated by a sadistic Haitian security officer whose own world gradually falls apart. Whilst all this unfolds Miami based drug cartels are determined to maintain their supply lines through Haiti from an unlikely alliance with the CIA. This is unknown to the US State Department and other well-meaning but conflicted international organisations during this period of confusion, chaos and violence.
Download or read book Voodoo and Politics in Haiti written by Michel S. Laguerre and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-07-27 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Not only does this book give a well-researched account of the politicization of Haitian Voodoo and the Voodooization of Haitian politics, it also lays the ground for the development of creative policies by the state vis-a-vis the cult. It is an indispensable research tool for the students of Afro-American, Caribbean and African societies in particular, and for religionists and political scientists in general.
Download or read book Voodoo Politics written by Lynn Garrison and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 582 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Voodoo and Power written by Kodi A. Roberts and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2015-11-13 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The racialized and exoticized cult of Voodoo occupies a central place in the popular image of the Crescent City. But as Kodi A. Roberts argues in Voodoo and Power, the religion was not a monolithic tradition handed down from African ancestors to their American-born descendants. Instead, a much more complicated patchwork of influences created New Orleans Voodoo, allowing it to move across boundaries of race, class, and gender. By employing late nineteenth and early twentieth-century first-hand accounts of Voodoo practitioners and their rituals, Roberts provides a nuanced understanding of who practiced Voodoo and why. Voodoo in New Orleans, a melange of religion, entrepreneurship, and business networks, stretched across the color line in intriguing ways. Roberts's analysis demonstrates that what united professional practitioners, or "workers," with those who sought their services was not a racially uniform folk culture, but rather the power and influence that Voodoo promised. Recognizing that social immobility proved a common barrier for their patrons, workers claimed that their rituals could overcome racial and gendered disadvantages and create new opportunities for their clients. Voodoo rituals and institutions also drew inspiration from the surrounding milieu, including the privations of the Great Depression, the city's complex racial history, and the free-market economy. Money, employment, and business became central concerns for the religion's practitioners: to validate their work, some began operating from recently organized "Spiritual Churches," entities that were tax exempt and thus legitimate in the eyes of the state of Louisiana. Practitioners even leveraged local figures like the mythohistoric Marie Laveau for spiritual purposes and entrepreneurial gain. All the while, they contributed to the cultural legacy that fueled New Orleans's tourist industry and drew visitors and their money to the Crescent City.
Download or read book The Spirits and the Law written by Kate Ramsey and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-02-07 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vodou has often served as a scapegoat for Haiti’s problems, from political upheavals to natural disasters. This tradition of scapegoating stretches back to the nation’s founding and forms part of a contest over the legitimacy of the religion, both beyond and within Haiti’s borders. The Spirits and the Law examines that vexed history, asking why, from 1835 to 1987, Haiti banned many popular ritual practices. To find out, Kate Ramsey begins with the Haitian Revolution and its aftermath. Fearful of an independent black nation inspiring similar revolts, the United States, France, and the rest of Europe ostracized Haiti. Successive Haitian governments, seeking to counter the image of Haiti as primitive as well as contain popular organization and leadership, outlawed “spells” and, later, “superstitious practices.” While not often strictly enforced, these laws were at times the basis for attacks on Vodou by the Haitian state, the Catholic Church, and occupying U.S. forces. Beyond such offensives, Ramsey argues that in prohibiting practices considered essential for maintaining relations with the spirits, anti-Vodou laws reinforced the political marginalization, social stigmatization, and economic exploitation of the Haitian majority. At the same time, she examines the ways communities across Haiti evaded, subverted, redirected, and shaped enforcement of the laws. Analyzing the long genealogy of anti-Vodou rhetoric, Ramsey thoroughly dissects claims that the religion has impeded Haiti’s development.
Download or read book Farewell Fred Voodoo written by Amy Wilentz and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-01-08 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography, this is a brilliant writer’s account of a long, painful, ecstatic—and unreciprocated—affair with a country that has long fascinated the world. A foreign correspondent on a simple story becomes, over time and in the pages of this book, a lover of Haiti, pursuing the heart of this beautiful and confounding land into its darkest corners and brightest clearings. Farewell, Fred Voodoo is a journey into the depths of the human soul as well as a vivid portrayal of the nation’s extraordinary people and their uncanny resilience. Haiti has found in Amy Wilentz an author of astonishing wit, sympathy, and eloquence.
Download or read book Kanaval written by and published by Soul Jazz Records. This book was released on 2010 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Voudou, sex, death and revolution are key ingredients in the stunning themes and visual imagery of the street theatre Kanaval of Jacmel, Haiti, where the men drag up, black up, wear cow horns, throw lassos and put snakes in their mouths! Light years away from the government sponsored, tourist-inspired floats of carnival throughout the world, this event is a vessel for Haitian peasants to discuss the local politics of Haiti, talk about the slave revolt that gave birth to Haiti, the first Black Republic, to commune with ancestors both personal and historical and much more. The book is a fascinating combination of photography, cultural and historical analysis and background, anthropology and also includes a set of oral histories by participants in this unique event.
Download or read book Voodoo Histories written by David Aaronovitch and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2010-02-04 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Meticulous in its research, forensic in its reasoning, robust in its argument, and often hilarious in its debunking... a highly entertaining rumble with the century's major conspiracy theorists and their theories." --John Lahr, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Tennessee Williams From an award-winning journalist, a history so funny, so true, so scary, it's bound to be called a conspiracy. Our age is obsessed by the idea of conspiracy. We see it everywhere- from Pearl Harbor to 9/11, from the assassination of Kennedy to the death of Diana. In this age of terrorism we live in, the role of conspiracy is a serious one, one that can fuel radical or fringe elements to violence. For David Aaronovitch, there came a time when he started to see a pattern among these inflammatory theories. these theories used similarly murky methods with which to insinuate their claims: they linked themselves to the supposed conspiracies of the past (it happened then so it can happen now); they carefully manipulated their evidence to hide its holes; they relied on the authority of dubious academic sources. Most important, they elevated their believers to membership of an elite- a group of people able to see beyond lies to a higher reality. But why believe something that entails stretching the bounds of probability so far? In this entertaining and enlightening book, he examines why people believe conspiracy theories, and makes an argument for a true skepticism: one based on a thorough knowledge of history and a strong dose of common sense.
Download or read book Rainy Season written by Amy Wilentz and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-07-24 with total page 539 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considered the best book ever written about Haiti, now updated with a New Introduction, “After the Earthquake,” features first hand-reporting from Haiti weeks after the 2010 earthquake. Through a series of personal journeys, each interwoven with scenes from Haiti’s extraordinary past, Amy Wilentz brings to life this turbulent and fascinating country. Opening with her arrival just days before the fall of Haiti’s President-for-Life, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, Wilentz captures a country electric with the expectation of change: markets that bustle by day explode with gunfire at night; outlaws control country roads; farmers struggle to survive in a barren land; and belief in voodoo and the spirits of the ancestors remains as strong as ever. The Rainy Season demystifies Haiti—a country and a people in cruel and capricious times. From the rebel priest Father Aristide and the street boys under his protection to the military strongmen who pass through the revolving door of power into the gleaming white presidential palace—and the buzzing international press corps members who jet in for a coup and leave the minute it’s over—Wilentz’s Haiti haunts the imagination.
Download or read book Voodoo Fire In Haiti written by Richard A. Loederer and published by Pelican Publishing. This book was released on 2005-11-30 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A valuable anthropological artifact...readers come to realize Haiti's connections with Louisiana, especially the River Parishes." --L'Observateur "A long-lost charmer about a trip within the Haitian interior of another era. . . [contains] very evocative woodcuts by the author that add to the total otherness of what and where he is, going from the wild 20's jazz scene in New York to the all-but-unbelievable scenes he was witness to in the cacophonous darkness of a voodoo ceremony." --The Courier-Gazette (Rockland, ME) "The drums took on a different rhythm, rattling out a sharp staccato message, accompanied by the heavy pounding of the bass. Faster and faster flew the feet of the dancers as they whirled round the fire. Their smooth muscles writhed and cramped as under the blows of an invisible whip." From his steamer voyage from Jazz Age New York to Cap Haitien to his punishing trek through the island's interior jungle to his rapt, yet fearful, attendance at an authentic voodoo ceremony, Richard A. Loederer captures the sights, sounds, and sensations of this mysterious Caribbean republic. Originally published in German in 1932, Loederer's eyewitness account of his adventures in Haiti has long been out of print. The author's own art-deco-style woodcuts add to the exotic appeal of this volume, which chronicles the vanishing African traditions of the island's people.
Download or read book Vodou Nation written by Michael Largey and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2006-05 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the Haitian musical tradition is probably best known for the Vodou-inspired roots music that helped topple the two-generation Duvalier dictatorship, the nation’s troubled history of civil unrest and its tangled relationship with the United States is more intensely experienced through its art music, which combines French and German elements of classical music with Haiti's indigenous folk music. Vodou Nation examines art music by Haitian and African American composers who were inspired by Haiti’s history as a nation created by slave revolt. Around the time of the United States’s occupation of Haiti in 1915, African American composers began to incorporate Vodou-inspired musical idioms to showcase black artistry and protest white oppression. Together with Haitian musicians, these composers helped create what Michael Largey calls the “Vodou Nation,” an ideal vision of Haiti that championed its African-based culture as a bulwark against America’s imperialism. Highlighting the contributions of many Haitian and African American composers who wrote music that brought rhythms and melodies of the Vodou ceremony to local and international audiences, Vodou Nation sheds light on a black cosmopolitan musical tradition that was deeply rooted in Haitian culture and politics.
Download or read book Urban Vodou written by and published by Interlink Books. This book was released on 2010 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world's media has chronicled Haiti's long history of political instability and social unrest. But perhaps more importantly, Haitians themselves reacted to the cycle of hope and despair in the form of hundreds of spontaneous street murals. Mostly in the capial, Port-au-Prince, these colorful and expressive paintings both recorded key events and articulated the hopes and fears of their creators. Tragically, many of these paintings were among the casualties of the earthquake that struck the island in early 2010.
Download or read book Tell My Horse written by Zora Neale Hurston and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Strikingly dramatic, yet simple and unrestrained . . . an unusual and intensely interesting book richly packed with strange information.” —New York Times Book Review Based on Zora Neale Hurston’s personal experiences in Haiti and Jamaica, where she participated as an initiate rather than just an observer of voodoo practices during her visits in the 1930s, this travelogue into a dark world paints a vividly authentic picture of the ceremonies, customs, and superstitions of voodoo.
Download or read book Rara written by Elizabeth McAlister and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2002-05-01 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rara is a vibrant annual street festival in Haiti, when followers of the Afro-Creole religion called Vodou march loudly into public space to take an active role in politics. Working deftly with highly original ethnographic material, Elizabeth McAlister shows how Rara bands harness the power of Vodou spirits and the recently dead to broadcast coded points of view with historical, gendered, and transnational dimensions.
Download or read book Healing in the Homeland written by Margaret Mitchell Armand and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2013-08-22 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Margaret Mitchell Armand presents a cutting edge interdisciplinary terrain inside an indigenous exploration of her homeland. Her contribution to the historiography of Haïtian Vodou demonstrates the struggle for its recognition in Haïti’s post-independence phase as well as its continued misunderstanding. Through a methodological, original study of the colonial culture of slavery and its dehumanization, Healing in the Homeland: Haitian Vodou Traditions examines the sociocultural and economic oppression stemming from the local and international derived politics and religious economic oppression. While concentrating the narratives on stories of indigenous elites educated in the western traditions, Armand moves pass the variables of race to locate the historical conjuncture at the root of the persistent Haïtian national division. Supported by scholarships of indigenous studies and current analysis, she elucidates how a false consciousness can be overcome to reclaim cultural identity and pride, and include a sociocultural, national educational program, and political platform that embraces traditional needs in a global context of mutual respect. While shredding the western adages, and within an indigenous model of understanding, this book purposefully brings forth the struggle of the African people in Haïti.
Download or read book Island Possessed written by Katherine Dunham and published by Doubleday. This book was released on 2012-05-16 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just as surely as Haiti is "possessed" by the gods and spirits of vaudun (voodoo), the island "possessed" Katherine Dunham when she first went there in 1936 to study dance and ritual. In this book, Dunham reveals how her anthropological research, her work in dance, and her fascination for the people and cults of Haiti worked their spell, catapulting her into experiences that she was often lucky to survive. Here Dunham tells how the island came to be possessed by the demons of voodoo and other cults imported from various parts of Africa, as well as by the deep class divisions, particularly between blacks and mulattos, and the political hatred still very much in evidence today. Full of the flare and suspense of immersion in a strange and enchanting culture, Island Possessed is also a pioneering work in the anthropology of dance and a fascinating document on Haitian politics and voodoo.
Download or read book Politics of Anthropology at Home II written by Christian Giordano and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2000 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
