The idea of voodoo in modern culture oftentimes invokes visions of mystical rituals performed in graveyards or large gatherings of people dancing around a fire shaking dead chickens at the night sky. More commonly, voodoo has become synonymous with terms like “make-believe” and “mumbo jumbo” in America’s twenty-first century technological era. Now it seems religious rites are easily replaced with a Google search, a phone call, or another mechanical solution. However, literature preserves a special place that technology cannot touch. Throughout the evolution of literature, specifically African American literature, from folk narratives in the nineteenth century to the post modern works of Toni Morrison in the twentieth century, voodoo has played an integral part in the lives of both characters and authors alike. Voodoo has proven over the past century to be a vehicle through which African American women in literature discover and maintain agency as distinctive and prominent members of society. With the aide of voodoo and its followers, Zora Neale Hurston publishes Tell My Horse in 1938, bolstering her position in the literary world as a prominent female author in the burgeoning, male dominated, Harlem Renaissance. Ann Petry continues the female African American literary tradition with The Street in 1946 imbuing within her character, Min, a means to escape her oppression of men and the street itself—confidence through voodoo. Toni Morrison’s Beloved brings voodoo to a modern level that helps each female character find herself and come to terms with the world she lives in. Voodoo has long since been viewed as both mysterious and fantastical to the modern reader, yet within the pages of novels written by African American women, lay the key to autonomy and strength.
Disbelief of the voodoo tradition has long been a stigma among white anthropologists such as Niles Newbell Puckett in his account, Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro (1926). He describes voodoo as “the great West African imaginary environment thronged with ghosts and spirits” (Puckett 169 added emphasis). His accounts within his book of what the “Southern Negro” believes in are just a few examples of the confusion voodoo creates in the eyes of the general public. Despite Puckett’s belief that voodoo is just a practice filled with “a strange mixture of Catholicism and voodooism,” it has actually been an integral part of African American culture since the eighteenth century during the peak of the slave trade (Puckett 193). Voodoo was brought to Louisiana by the slave trade primarily from West Africa’s Benin where voodoo holds its roots in its spirits and practices. After the Embargo Act of 1808 which ended the slave import to Louisiana, authorities still wished to have slaves despite the ban on importing them and promoted slave growth by prohibiting the separation of slave families (wikipedia). The encouraged familial growth of the slave population, in turn, bolstered solidarity within the slave communities. This solidarity allowed for the proliferation of the African American community and began a new cultural evolution of beliefs, language, and religious practices. Among these new practices, voodoo began in the New World as a way of maintaining ties to the homeland of Africa and as a way of integrating with their surroundings. This integration came from the blending of voodoo practices with Catholic patron Saints as a way of evolving the old world vodun ways with the new world white-dominated society. Despite confusing views on where voodoo came from or how long it has been practiced in this country, it is a commonly held belief that voodoo has been a key part of African American culture since before America was a country and has been evolving with it ever since.
To the untrained eye, voodoo is rarely seen as being pivotal in the development of American literature; however, its presence is seen from post-Civil War literature to twenty-first century literature. Because African American literature has its roots in oral history, folk tales told from one generation to the next, inevitably gave birth to African American story telling which, of course, included tales of voodoo. As early as the 1890s, folk tales containing voodoo themes were being collected by various anthropologists, one of which, a precursor to Zora Neale Hurston, was named Mary Alicia Owen. Owen compiled folk tales, many from former slaves, and a common thread was soon discovered in each story, of those stories that contained the subject of voodoo, a female character was generally both the central character and the facilitator of voodoo rights to aide with problems faced by those around her (Owen). The main character named Granny in Owen’s anthology of folk tales, “knew the value of every herb and simple to be found in the state, she was adept in the healing art; she could ‘set’ hens so that they never lost an egg…tell when to wean a calf baby…’lay out’ the dead and usher in the living” (Owen 2). Granny, in this set of folk tales, is an all-knowing wise, anecdotal figure like Harriet Beacher Stowe’s, Uncle Tom. The female represented in these stories becomes a character that all other characters must go to in order to solve their problems. Granny is both the mediator and facilitator between troubled members of the town and, therefore, gains an importance and agency through her voodoo knowledge. Folk tales in African American culture come to represent one of the building blocks of African American literature where women are not only included, but dominate.
As mentioned, the word “voodoo” often conjures up images of sacrifices and bloody rituals in the minds of most people today. It is a practice viewed in modern culture synonymous to make-believe and fantasy, but also viewed as mystical and exotic. Rarely is voodoo evident in modern texts without a nod of the fantastic, or the unachievable. For example, in the film trilogy Pirates of the Caribbean, which is full of magical things and unearthly characters, the pivotal character to which everyone, including Davy Jones, must bow down to is the voodoo queen, Tia Dalma (Figure 1). Not only does she help the wayward pirates in times of need, but, ultimately, she becomes the single most pivotal character on which the fate of everyone depends. The voodoo queen has long been the image to which many people attribute power and reverence. Tia Dalma undoubtedly gains her appearance and social stature from figures such as Marie Laveau (1801-1881) and Mama Lola (Alourdes Margaux). Both voodoo queens gained a huge following and became the go-to women when followers needed help. That’s not to say that there aren’t male voodoo priests, but the image of the voodoo queen is a powerful one that resonates not only through African American society, but American society in general. Voodoo’s strong cultural tie to the birth of the African American community does not discriminate between male priests and voodoo queens, but rather creates a religion that empowers both sexes. This empowerment is seen evidenced in many literary texts, but most notably texts of female African American authors. From Zora Neale Hurston, Ann Petry, and Toni Morrison, voodoo imbues both author and their characters alike with the ability to become aware of their surroundings and take control of the situations at hand.
Hurston’s Haitian Adventure
In 1937, Zora Neale Hurston travels to Haiti to collect folk tales and anecdotes for her anthropological novel Tell My Horse which is published in 1938. In her collection of stories, Hurston explores Haitian culture, its people, its politics, its landscapes, and its practices, most notably, voodoo. Although Hurston is an African American woman collecting Haitian stories, Tell My Horse explores many facets of the Haitian culture that cross into African American culture as well. Because the roots of both come from similar belief systems in Africa, the Caribbean-African sociological facets are very similar to those found in the African American culture. Haitian accounts of voodoo, its practices, and its people and African American Louisiana-voodoo offer similar benefits to their followers and was deemed worthy of studying by Hurston. Hurston studies voodoo from an anthropological stance and discovers its power during the height of colonial occupation in Haiti and during slavery in the United States, “This common language [voodoo] was feared because it made it easier for them to forge alliances…Voodoo has been the inspiration for the major slave revolts in this hemisphere” (Ishmael Reed xiii). Although the two cultures (Haitian voodoo followers and post-Civil War African Americans) were very similar, Hurston also sees differences and writes: “Here in the shadow of the Empire State Building, death and the graveyard are final. It is such a positive end that we use it as a measure of nothingness and eternity. We have the quick and the dead. But in Haiti there is the quick, the dead, and then there are zombies” (Hurston 179). Hurston’s cultural studies of the Haitian people and their practices led her to write her own account of what she saw and published in the United States. From Hurston’s extensive studies in Haiti, two books are published, Tell My Horse and the more well-known, Their Eyes Were Watching God. These two novels were to solidify Hurston’s place as an African American female writer during the Harlem Renaissance.
Hurston publishes Their Eyes Were Watching God in 1937 while in Haiti collecting stories for Tell My Horse. Because she was Haitian culture, Haitian images of voodoo and its sociological implications naturally made their way into Their Eyes Were Watching God. The inclusion of voodoo imagery into her story, not only adds to the mood and the plot, but links the importance of the practice to the importance of the African American South. Daphne Lamothe in her article Vodou Imagery, African American Tradition and Cultural Transformation in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God outlines the various implications of voodoo in the text,
[Hurston’s] use of Vodou imagery enables her to analyze the relationship among migration, culture and identity that lies at the heart of the African Diaspora. In contrast to those critics who read Hurston’s use of folk culture, such as Vodou, as a sign of nostalgia, I view it as her means of comprehending transformation. Within traditional cultural forms lies a structure which encourages and enables dynamic change. (157-58)
The ability of Hurston to recognize “dynamic change” within a culture through her observations and analysis enables Hurston to also be a vehicle of that change because she is spreading awareness through her literature. Not only does change beget awareness, but awareness gives way to knowledge and empowerment. Karen McCarthy Brown writes in Mama Lola:
The adaptability of Vodou over time, and its responsiveness to other cultures and religions; the fact that it has no canon, creed, or pope; the multiplicity of its 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, including those of the African homeland. This visibility can give women a way of working realistically and creatively with the forces that define and confine them. (221)
Hurston gains insight into voodoo and uses voodoo imagery within the text to, “provide her with a vehicle for political engagement and social commentary” to which she can stand firmly upon not only as an African American, but also as a woman (Lamothe 159). Hurston finds empowerment and autonomy within herself through the literature in which she integrates voodoo and what it means in the twentieth century African American culture.
Despite Hurston’s intention to create empowerment and understanding of African Americans within the general population of readers and the popularity of the Harlem Renaissance, by no means had equal rights been reached even among the most talented of authors. Hurston’s inclusion of voodoo imagery spurred much interest among her readership of both the practice itself and its practitioners; however, this interest was not out of reverence, but rather borne out of a need to satisfy the early twentieth century quest for the exotic African jungle-lust. Despite the racially motivated interest in the “jungle bunny” façade, Lamothe remarks that, “the Vodou subtext [in Their Eyes Were Watching God] represents a facet of the primitive that exceeds the scope of the plantation and jungle bunny stereotypes that dominated the Harlem Renaissance era. It links the southern folk with a Black Atlantic experience rooted in slavery, armed revolution and African spirituality” (161). Hurston’s inclusion of voodoo imagery “completely evades such predictable stereotypes” such as the drums beating in the jungle and lusty natives, but dives instead “into the complexities of the belief system, the culture from which it springs and the ways in which those complexities address African American (and Afro-Caribbean) social and political concerns” (Lamothe 161). Although the socio-political implications of voodoo in Hurston’s work has become apparent to some, many casual readers miss the greater implications and read Their Eyes Were Watching God without acknowledging the crucial evidence of voodoo within the text.
Hurston uses voodoo imagery and symbolism in Their Eyes Were Watching God not only to give her female characters autonomy, but, in the process, also gives herself autonomy as a female author. Understanding key voodoo spirits is important to understanding where the imagery in her work is coming from, and what exactly it implies. The voodoo goddess Ezili (Figure 2) represents both the mulatta goddess of love and the black goddess associated with maternal rage (Lamothe). Despite the seemingly conflicting representations, Hurston imbues her character, Janie, with both. Fair-skinned Janie comes to represent the goddess Ezili as a whole, rather than the two conflicting halves. This contradiction opens both the character and the text to multiple interpretations of the female psyche and what Janie is trying to achieve as an independent woman. On one hand, the goddess Ezili is of an elite class, self-possessed, and materialistic. On the other, she is associated with the working class and with motherhood. Although these are opposing forces, Janie embodies both—stuck between upper class and lower class, loving herself and loving others. Voodoo imagery in Their Eyes, particularly the image of Ezili, is used by Hurston “to implicitly enter a discourse on the present and future of African-American culture” (Lamothe 161). Janie represents a link between the previous conceptions of what an African American woman should be (the working class mother side of Ezili) and opens a discussion of where the modern African American woman is headed (the elite, self-possessed, materialistic side of Ezili). Hurston intentionally creates this character of opposition to show the peripheral position African American women occupy within society, but also traces Janie’s triumphs and let downs to show readers the autonomy that can be achieved despite the perceived limitations of race or gender. More importantly, “the text celebrates female sexuality with its sensuous prose and its positioning of Janie’s quest for love at its center” (Lamothe 162). Love and sexuality become crucial cornerstones in the interpretation of voodoo in Hurston’s work. The title of Hurston’s Tell My Horse is explained within the prose of Their Eyes. Hurston intensifies the theme of sexuality
By associating it with the ritual of possession in which a god mounts an initiate [into the voodoo practice]. The goddess [Ezili] is said to ‘ride’ her horse. The implicit sexuality in this terminology is self-evident and Ezili’s desire of numerous ‘husbands’ is well documented in the anthropological literature. The image of a woman, either human or spirit, ‘mounting’ a man proves significant because it implies the woman’s control over her own sexuality and over the man’s pleasure as well. For Hurston, representing a woman’s sexuality in full bloom is not just affirmative, it is revolutionary. (Lamothe 163)
The invocation of voodoo imagery, again, becomes crucial in Hurston’s writing for female enfranchisement. Voodoo in Their Eyes stands as a reminder of African American independence and expressiveness for its female characters. Hurston’s discourse of female sexuality was revolutionary at the time of her publication; yet, the “mounting” of the “horse” in voodoo is not uncommon and is often welcomed by said horse. The multiple deities present in voodoo practices allow for the cultural acceptance of both men and women and recognize their equally important roles in society.
From Zora Neale Hurston’s anthropological studies in Haiti, the empowerment of voodoo practices and key spirits enable her to claim a sort of emancipation for African American women. Despite African American women being one of the most disadvantaged groups in the United States throughout history, Hurston gives her characters (and herself) both sexual license and power over ones self through the beliefs of voodoo. From the folk tales collected by Mary Alicia Owen to folk tales collected by Hurston, the feminine identity plays a key role in the African American world. However, in the face of the oppression faced by the African American woman, through literature, readers are exposed to what the African American woman is capable of: independence, strength, integrity, intelligence, remaining true to her culture, but also furthering the morals, ideals, and practices of a society from a once-oppressed female role. Literature in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries continues to be the mode of denouncing old boundaries of gender and race roles and exploring new ones to both further and expand the capabilities of the African American woman.
Overcoming Oppression in The Street
In 1946, Ann Petry’s first novel, The Street, details the oppressive lives of African American characters living in a Harlem apartment building. The street soon comes to represent the oppression of everyone who lives on it, and, more specifically, a very real racial oppression. The Street tells the story of Lutie Johnson and her son Bub in their struggle to achieve a comfortable, safe life in Harlem despite setback after setback. One major theme of this novel is the female body and psyche is constantly torn down by other characters within the novel. If a woman in the story is young and black everyone assumes she is either a prostitute or easy to solicit. If she is old and black she is useless and will endure physical and verbal abuse. William Scott, author of the article Material Resistance and the Agency of the Body in Ann Petry’s The Street observes that “the African American characters in The Street are variously but consistently evaluated in light of the overwhelming lack of possibilities available to them” (90). Not only does the street create oppression, but it begets obsession, specifically in the character of Jones, the superintendent of the apartment building. The two women most involved in Jones’s life (whether they want to be or not) constantly face Jones’s obsessive and abusive lust after Lutie and his surmounting disgust with his live-in wife Min. Lutie must contend with Jones’s malicious intent, but more importantly, Min has been subjected to Jones’s abuse for years and has not been able to do anything about it. However, in Jones clouded judgment, he underestimates the power of the women around him, most notably Min. Min transforms from the most abused and underrated character in the novel to the only character that escapes the oppression of the street by achieving agency with the help of the voodoo priest The Prophet David. Voodoo evidenced through Min’s dealings with the Prophet David ultimately leads her to not only stand up for herself, but also gives her confidence never before seen in her life and allows her to pick up and leave the oppression of Jones and the dismal environment of the street.
Min is seen for most of the novel as both the most pitiful character and the character least likely to stand up for herself, “streets had turned Min, the woman who lived with him, into a drab drudge so spineless and limp she was like a soggy dishrag” (Petry 57). Min has no goals in life other than to not be homeless and she intends to achieve that by being as invisible as possible. Even her name, Min, suggests a life of little importance. Other characters in the book also feel she is a shell of a person, not worth acknowledging more than once. Lutie says of Min:
The woman sat down in the chair again. Melting into it. Because the dark brown dress she wore was almost the exact shade of the dark brown of the upholstery and because the overstuffed chair swallowed her up until she was scarcely distinguishable from the chair itself. Because, too, of a shrinking withdrawal in her way of sitting as though she were trying to take up the least amount of space possible. (Petry 23-24)
Despite Min’s seemingly unoffending stature and personality, she seems to strike a chord of malice in Jones nonetheless. On many occasions Jones idly watches Min go about her daily household routine imaging the beating he is going to give her later; however, is it Min he is upset with, or is he upset with a projection of what he wants in Lutie, but sees nothing remotely similar in Min who is the woman he lives with? William Scott notes, “Min’s body functions to block Jones’s categorical subsuming of female bodies according to the rule of such an opposition. Because Min’s body serves as both the unacknowledged substrate for Jones’s pattern and as the (presumably sole) object of his anger” (Scott 106).
Min is set up by Petry to be the punching bag of the world. Yet, despite her repeated setbacks in life, Min’s first step towards autonomy leads her to the voodoo priest named the Prophet David. Min discovers the Prophet David while entering a discourse with Mrs. Hedges about Jones’s insatiable lust and anger propagated by the mere presence of Lutie. In an effort to maintain her position as a resident in Jones’s apartment, Min realizes she must find a way to make Jones take his sights off of Lutie. When Mrs. Hedges suggests the man named David, the thought of going to the “root doctor” terrifies Min, yet she is drawn to it because other females in the African American community (most notably her neighbor Mrs. Hedges) say the root doctor can help her with whatever she needs. Min is drawn to the power voodoo has to offer to women, yet, “never once had she protested. Never once, she thought with pride, had she left a job, no matter how badly the people treated her” (Petry 127). Min finds her passivity a virtue, but realizes it won’t help her now. Petry offers no more explanation of why these women are drawn to the mysticism of voodoo, but William Scott notes the difficulties faced by the characters within the novel, “How is it possible to think ‘agency’ when [one’s] very condition of being or social existence is defined as a state of determined negation?” (91). Perhaps this constant state of determined negation allows people to try whatever they can to make their lives better. Only after visiting David do the women begin “to think ‘agency’.” Despite the odds against Min and the position she occupies in life, the promise of maintaining her residence gives her the willpower to make sure Jones doesn’t harm her. By seeking out the power of voodoo, she soon finds herself, “committing an act of defiance for the first time in her life…She was actually making an effort to change a situation” (127). David’s shop is filled with women seeking assistance with their lives. Is it the gullibility of women that lead them to David, or do they have assurance that their lives can change for the better with the aide of his hoodoo powders and incantations? Petry includes voodoo imagery combined with a waiting line of only women in David’s shop to emphasize the draw of women to the power of voodoo. Whether or not she believes in the power of voodoo is not explicit, but she does give her character, Min, agency through the power of voodoo as seen evidenced in Hurston’s empowerment of Janie through the embodiment of a voodoo goddess. Min becomes empowered by David’s genuine interest in her problems and his “hoodoo trinkets” that help her maintain her position in the household and stop Jones from lusting after Lutie. Here we see the beginning of Min recognizing her agency after her visit to the voodoo shop.
Min’s visit to David’s shop comes with fortunate repercussions for her. Min puts to use the ingredients given to her by David, including the cross as soon as she reaches the apartment. The cross is what ultimately empowers Min the most because the knowledge that it is present in the house drives Jones almost to insanity.
By interrupting Jones’s idealization of Lutie’s body, Min’s cross also interrupts the idealized definition of her own body as an apparently indefinable mass of flesh; since this latter dialectically sustains the form of the ideal by the of its supposed formlessness…It thus allows Min to finally view herself as a subject, an agent in her own right. (Scott 105)
Although the symbol of the cross is characteristically a Christian one, voodoo has long been a combination of both African rituals and borrowed Christian emblems like the cross, saints, and various prayers. Jones becomes so distraught over the presence of the cross in the apartment that he loses his focus on Lutie and starts to realize the capability Min possesses as a human being, “the triumph of actually possessing the means of controlling Jones made her face glow” (137). Not only does the voodoo give Min the real (or imagined) power over Jones and his desire to throw her out, but it gives her the clarity to realize she can remove herself from the situation and be free of Jones and the street forever, “she had her mind full made up to go. It wasn’t safe here anymore, she couldn’t stand Jones anymore” (368). Min’s confidence achieved with the help of David’s voodoo allowed her to be the only character to leave the street with real hopes for the future.
Petry does not let the reader go as easily as Min left, but rather she makes the reader think of the struggles of the other female characters within the novel. Although Lutie leaves the street in the end, she is fleeing out of fear and abdication as a mother. Lutie hopes for a future in Chicago where the streets are more welcoming to a young black female, but as readers know from Native Son Lutie will only meet with worse obstacles that she had before. Mrs. Hedges seems to have already gained agency from her struggle with being a recovering burn victim. Because desire and sexuality is no longer a strength she possesses, her place of power is over the young prostitutes she harbors. In many ways, Mrs. Hedges is like Jones in that she is both oppressed by and oppressor of the street. Her agency stems not from her sexuality or desirability, but from her cunning and business-like approach to the very marketable situation of destitute women in Harlem. Min remains the only hopeful character throughout the story and she achieves an elevated understanding of who she is and what she is capable through the power of suggestion of voodoo. Female characters throughout the African American literary tradition struggle endlessly with the oppressive forces of men and the combative world in which they create. Some characters maintain their sanity and strive to further their positions in life like Hurston’s Janie and others stumble across a means of escape like Petry’s Min. All females, authors and characters alike, must come to terms with unfair surroundings and figure out how to rise above them.
Conclusions and Applications
Voodoo has given agency to female characters and authors alike in African American literature from the late nineteenth century to the present. African American literature has seen oppression, degradation, and a general lack of interest over the past one hundred and fifty years, but many authors have stood up to make the general population hear the voices of an oppressed people. From Frederick Douglass in the nineteenth century to Ralph Ellison during the Harlem Renaissance to Iceberg Slim in the ghettos of Chicago, African American literature was being published and gaining a following despite oppressive circumstances. Although African American literature has faced continuous marginalization, men within the literary community continue to marginalize another population within their own boundaries—the female authors who also represent and advocate for the same things men fight for. Struggling to gain agency in a male-dominated world has proven to be a difficult hurdle to overcome in literature and society, yet African American women have found a way. Through many modes of striving for equal rights, one vehicle of agency that has proven particularly effective for both African American female authors and the characters they depict—voodoo. Voodoo has provided a means through which agency is achieved in many examples from oral slave folk tales to Zora Neale Hurston and Ann Petry and has allowed women to find perspective through its applications.
In the late twentieth century, no female author has become more outspoken for equal rights among race and gender in the sphere of literature than Toni Morrison.
In her book Playing in the Dark Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, Morrison outlines the means by which American literature has gained everything in the wake of slavery and yet refuses to acknowledge it. Morrison writes:
This knowledge holds that traditional, canonical American literature is free of, uninformed, and unshaped by the four-hundred-year-old presence of, first, Africans and then African Americans in the United States. It assumes that this presence—which shaped the body politic, the Constitution, and the entire history of the culture—has had no significant place or consequence in the origin and development of that culture’s literature. (Morrison 4-5)
She terms this literary elephant in the room the Africanist presence. Africanist presence is a term created “for the denotative and connotative blackness that African peoples have come to signify, as well as the entire range of views, assumptions, readings, and misreadings that accompany Eurocentric learning about these people” (Morrison 6-7). The Africanist presence encompasses the gamut of ignored African American influence in literature and, you can’t have Africa or an Africanist presence without voodoo. Much of what she discusses not only applies to slavery in general, but also inherently includes everything slavery propagated including the practice of voodoo. Morrison advocates for the acknowledgement of the Africanist presence and the entire culture it represents, she argues that literature would not be as far progressed as it is now without, “the contemplation of this black presence [which] is central to any understanding of our national literature and should not be permitted to hover at the margins of literary imagination” (Morrison 5). Not only does Morrison advocate for the Africanist presence in American literature, but in her Nobel Prize winning novel Beloved she includes both the image of slavery as a ghost, and the magical realism that stems from voodoo in order to get rid of the plaguing spirit. Morrison takes the African American inclusion of voodoo into feminine literature a step further and modernizes it to a broader, ethnically diverse, audience. In this way, the magical realism she includes does, in fact, represent voodoo, but attempts to exclude the popular racist “jungle bunny” stereotypes that might be perceived (as it was perceived in the early twentieth century). Morrison utilizes imagery of the community of African American women to exorcise the spirit of Beloved in a way that modern men and women can wrap their minds around rather than suggesting the solution to one’s problems through “barbaric” voodoo. Through the communal effort to rid the place of Beloved, the women in this novel ultimately allow for both Sethe and Denver to achieve a state of agency. Denver comes of age and begins to stand up for what she believes in and Sethe understands she cannot be dependent on the memory of others and the past to get her through life after Beloved is driven away. Morrison’s magical realism both furthers the sense of feminine community and tradition in the novel, but also eases the average reader around the idea of the Africanist ritual.
African American female authors have found through literature, not only a mode of expression, but a mode through which research, application, and acknowledgement of voodoo as a viable vehicle towards agency. Characters like Hurston’s Janie, Petry’s Min, and Morrison’s Sethe all begin the story with their search for something to validate their existences. Ultimately Janie finds harmony within herself despite her seemingly competing forces within through the acceptance of her power as a woman. Min finally stands up for herself after the power of suggestion voodoo allows her to see. And Sethe finally lets go after the memory of Beloved is finally put to rest with her bones. Each of these authors and their characters maintain ties to their heritage by paying homage through the inclusion of voodoo in their literary texts to slavery and Africa. The twenty-first century is already beginning to see a new wave of authors and literary traditions through traditional literary texts and media forms that seek to not only make the world aware of their pride as African Americans but also make the next step in gaining agency as women, men, and humans in general.
Works Cited
Hurston, Zora Neale. Tell My Horse Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica. New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1938.
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1937.
Lamothe, Daphne. Vodou imagery, African-American Tradition and Cultural Transformation in Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God”. .Callaloo, Vol. 22, No.1 pp. 157-175. The Johns Hopkins University Press. 1999.
McCarthy Brown, Karen. Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: 1991.
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.
Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1992.
Owens, Mary Alicia. Voodoo Tales, As Told Among the Negroes of the South-West. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993.
Petry, Ann. The Street. Houghton Mifflin Company. Boston: 1946.
Puckett, Niles Newbell. Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro. The University of North Carolina Press. Chapel Hill: 1926.
Reed, Ishmael. Introduction to Zora Neale Hurston’s Tell My Horse. New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1990.
Scott, William. "Material Resistance and the Agency of the Body in Ann Petry's The Street." American Literature: A Journal of Literary History, Criticism, and Bibliography. 78.1 (2006): 89-116.
Works Referenced
Rhodes, Jewell Parker. Voodoo Dreams. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1971.
Wade-Gayles, Gloria. My Soul is a Witness: African American Women’s Spirituality. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995.
Zauditu-Selassie, K. African Spiritual Traditions in the Novels of Toni Morrison. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2009.
No comments:
Post a Comment