Domestic Violence In Mama Vodou By Karen Mccarthy Brown

Women and Vodou

In the United States, we look mainly at mainstream religion and don't even look much into other religions apart from our own. Vodou is occasionally depicted as very dark, so it's not given the light of day, to learn about the religion itself. But in Karen McCarthy Brown's book, Mama Lola, she talks about Vodou and the connectedness people have to the religion and the spirits in Vodou. In the excerpt of Mama Lola, Brown talks about how Vodou is a religion that empowers women, more frequently than other religions throughout the world; but there are still constraints on gender, social class, and race. Throughout the excerpt we learn about the ways spirits help the people who practice Vodou in their everyday lives, especially women.

And although it was said that Vodou is a religion that empowers women, Vodou still is influenced by Haitian culture which is very misogynistic. There frequently is domestic violence and high male supremacy throughout Haitian culture which seeps into the influence of Vodou. In the excerpt, Brown writes, "…oungan, for example, are notorious for mistreating, in various ways, the women who become ounsi (ritual assistants) in their temples" (220). Things are indeed changing for the women in Vodou though, especially the ones who live in urban areas versus rural areas. In rural areas women can earn respect in a few positions such as herbalists or midwives, and on some occasions priestess, "but nowhere do they challenge the religious hegemony of the rural male" (221). But in urban areas, women are thriving, and it's not similar to rural areas at all. For example, when Brown talks about urban areas she claims that the urban Vodou leaders are women by at least half. Also, there's a different type of feeling within temples ran by women, as well. Women play a big role within the Vodou community as women are the caretakers, mothers, cooks, etc. Due to the nature of nurture, when you are thinking about a woman's temple it's more home-like, whereas men's temples are more business-like. This comparison goes back to the roles of women in rural and urban areas. Continuing with how Vodou is empowering women, it has a lot to do with the

Brown talks about how Vodou is something that is very adaptable, and that is due to the fact that Vodou doesn't have a pope or something similar, but instead it has spirits "and the intimate detail in which those spirits reflect the lives of the faithful- all these characteristics make women's lives visible within Vodou in ways they are not in other religious traditions" (221). The female spirits are very human-like, which causes women to feel like they can relate with these spirits. This is sometimes unusual among other religions and cultures. Lasyrenn is a spirit who is sometimes depicted as a mermaid and sometimes a whale, but she is half black and half white, sometimes with black hair and sometimes with blonde, she is a very elusive character. Lasyrenn is important when thinking about social class, race, and gender because Lasyrenn is thought have the roots to the trauma of slavery. Ezili Dantỏ, on the other hand is a black, single mother, who wasn't too proud to work, and loves and nurtures her children. And then there is Ezili Freda, she "concerns herself with love and romance. [Her] connection to romance, like her light skin and her jewelry, identifies her with upper-class Haitian women". (247) When you look at these three spirits you realize that they all have very dynamic stories and such stories