Voodoo Queen

March 15, 2004
Spell books, guidebooks, fictional works, music, and even a dance choreographed by Alvin Ailey have all paid tribute to the mysterious New Orleans mother and daughter both named Marie Laveau. Ward (anthropology, women's studies, & urban studies, Univ. of New Orleans; A World Full of Women) here provides eyeopening details of these two women's lives and the spiritual, magical, and sexual powers they wielded in 19th-century New Orleans. Marie Laveau the elder was the founder and priestess of American Voodoo; a free black woman, she also sought to relieve the suffering brought by racial and other injustices. Marie Laveau the younger worked on social issues concerning family and domestic violence and reluctantly became the bridge between her mother's French Creole brand of Voodoo and the Hoodoo that Southern blacks brought to New Orleans. Ward gathered information from the Louisiana Historical Collection, from libraries, and from wandering through historic New Orleans. Though many web sites are dedicated to these women and pilgrimages are still made to their gravesite, this appears to be the only full-length biography available. This engrossing book provides the feel of historic New Orleans during the Civil War and will hold the interest of most readers. Recommended for popular collections.-L. Kriz, West Des Moines P.L., IA

Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 15, 2004
Two commanding Creole women reigned supreme in New Orleans between the 1820s and 1880s, the spiritual leader Marie Laveau and her similarly gifted daughter of the same name. Ward, an indomitable researcher and inspired interpreter, not only tells the entire astonishing and moving story of the two Marie Laveaus but also offers a fresh perspective on Creole culture and voodoo New Orleans style, a religion of the African diaspora that, as Ward so sensitively explains, was crucial to the survival of African Americans during the grim days of slavery. Official documentation of the lives of Marie the First and Marie the Second is scant and confusing, but Ward brilliantly deciphers evidence of the shrewd strategies the Laveaus employed in order to conduct the voodoo gatherings so essential to practitioners and so feared and demonized by the white establishment, and, most critically, to help free slaves. Citing numerous sources new to history books, Ward brings tumultuous nineteenth-century New Orleans vividly to life as she reveals the true nature of the equally maligned and mythologized Marie Laveaus, devotional, dramatic, and subversive women of otherworldly power and courage who saved numerous lives, and made life livable for many more.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)