Voodoo
Queen author, Martha Ward, is quoted in
New York Times article on Voodoo:
"Something very real
is happening," said Martha Ward, a
professor of anthropology at the University
of New Orleans who wrote one of the forthcoming
books about Laveau. "Americans today
are hungry for spiritual fulfillment, and
voodoo offers a direct experience with the
sacred that appeals to more and more people.
"This is especially visible
in New Orleans, which has always been a
center of those beliefs," Ms Ward said,
"Marie Laveau rules the imagination
of this city. People think about her, see
her, have visions of her, dream about her,
talk to her. I know because these people
are showing up on my doorstep almost every
day."
from "Interest Surges
in Voodoo, and Its Queen," New York
Times, November 30, 2003
Martha
Ward www.marthaward.net/disc.htm One
of the famous above-ground cemeteries of
New Orleans is known as St. Louis No. 1,
the oldest graveyard in the city. A tall
marble and stucco tomb there is a site where
devotees frequently leave gifts - flowers,
candy, salt, coins, beads, bourbon - for
Marie Laveau, the famous voodoo priestess.
She still attracts attention, and some people
still talk to her. One of these is Martha
Ward, an anthropologist at the University
of New Orleans, who has written
Voodoo Queen:
The Spirited Lives of Marie
Laveau
(University Press of Mississippi).
It is a book from a strange sort of participatory
journalism; the author says she has "relied
on dreams, intuition, a hyperactive imagination,
and funky Voodoo luck." She admits
to standing in front of the tomb and hearing
Marie laugh when asked "What really
happened?" Marie's answer: "Who
knows the whole story, and maybe it's better
that way." There is such a gumbo of
legend and fact here, along with earnest
attempts to clear up history and legal agreements
that were deliberately made murky in the
first place, that calling upon voodoo as
a reference source isn't as dicey as it
might seem. Ward is a competent guide through
confusing social customs of strange times
in a strange locale, and she interprets
the gaps as carefully as possible. "There's
hardly any peg in this whole narrative that's
literal, truthful or absolute," she
warns, but there is plenty of good storytelling
and historical recreations of New Orleans
nonetheless.
There is a legend that the
infamous New Orleans native and Voodoo Queen
Marie Laveau ( Leveaux, Lavaux, Le Veau,
Levaux ) never died, that, in fact, her
spirit lives on in selected female descendents
in Her Secret society, and Laveau's faithful
are awaiting her return. Jewell Parker Rhodes
(Voodoo Dreams, Douglass's Women, Magic
City) births a modern day Marie in the second
book of the Marie Laveau/Voodoo trilogy,
Voodoo Season: a Marie Laveau Mystery.
Marie
Laveau and the Devil
Baby of Bourbon Street (
Find out more here.)
