Vodou En Vogue - (Where Religion Lives) by Eziaku Atuama Nwokocha (Paperback)

About the Book

In Haitian Vodou, spirits impact Black practitioners' everyday lives, tightly connecting the sacred and the secular. As Eziaku Atuama Nwokocha reveals in this richly textured book, that connection is manifest in the dynamic relationship between public religious ceremonies, material aesthetics, bodily adornment, and spirit possession.

Book Synopsis

In Haitian Vodou, spirits impact Black practitioners' everyday lives, tightly connecting the sacred and the secular. As Eziaku Atuama Nwokocha reveals in this richly textured book, that connection is manifest in the dynamic relationship between public religious ceremonies, material aesthetics, bodily adornment, and spirit possession. Nwokocha spent more than a decade observing Vodou ceremonies from Montreal and New York to Miami and Port-au-Prince. She engaged particularly with a Haitian practitioner and former fashion designer, Manbo Maude, who presided over Vodou temples in Mattapan, Massachusetts, and Jacmel, Haiti. With vivid description and nuanced analysis, Nwokocha shows how Manbo Maude's use of dress and her production of ritual garments are key to serving Black gods and illuminate a larger transnational economy of fashion and spiritual exchange.

This innovative book centers on fashion and other forms of self-presentation, yet it draws together many strands of thought and practice, showing how religion is a multisensorial experience of engagement with what the gods want and demand from worshippers. Nwokocha's ethnographic work will challenge and enrich readers' understandings not only of Vodou and its place in Black religious experience but also of religion's entanglements with gender and sexuality, race, and the material and spiritual realms.

Review Quotes

"Vodou en Vogue is a compelling, ethnographically grounded foray into the sartorial world of Haitian Vodou."--Journal of Religion

"[Nwokocha's] ethnographic framework and methodology help to paint a vivacious portrait of fashion as revealed through the lived experiences and ritual performances of the social actors in Manbo Maude's Vodou communities."--Sociology of Religion

"An engaging analysis of the role of adornment in collective practices of practitioners . . . by a scholar who spent more than a decade observing and participating in Vodou ceremonies."--Reading Religion

"Nwokocha offers a sensorially rich and analytically evocative study that examines the aesthetic, spiritual, and social dimensions of Haitian Vodou. . . . Written with visual and relational clarity, the book engages readers attuned to the textures and atmospheres of ritual life."--Religious Studies Review

"This innovative book centers on fashion and dress among female Vodou practitioners, focusing on fashion's significance within religious ritual, material aesthetics, and embodiment by spirits. . . . Highly recommended."--CHOICE