Karen McCarthy Brown's "Mama Lola" challenges stereotypes of Vodou by offering an intimate portrait of African-based religion in everyday life. She explores the importance of women's religious practices along with related themes of family and of social change. Weaving several of her own voices - analytic, descriptive and personal - with the voices of her subjects in alternate chapters of traditional ethnography and ethnographic fiction, Brown presents herself as a character in Mama Lola's world and allows the reader to evaluate her interactions there. Brown's work is an experiment in ethnography as a social art form rooted in human relationships. A new preface, epilogue, bibliography and a collection of family photographs tell the story of the effect of the book's publication on Mama Lola's life.
- ISBN10 0520224752
- ISBN13 9780520224759
- Publish Date 4 December 2001 (first published 2 April 1991)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 4 April 2011
- Publish Country US
- Imprint University of California Press
- Edition Updated and expanded ed
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 447
- Language English