Voodoo Queen: The Spirited Lives of Marie Laveau

Marie Laveau Voodoo Queen: The Spirited Lives of Marie Laveau is written by Martha Ward. In this book, Ward tries to untangle the truth from the myth that surrounds Marie Laveau. She says she is "merely an aging storyteller" (XIV). Ward takes "gumbo ya ya," gossip, rumors, hearsay, slander, and story telling around the gumbo pot, and tries to prove or disprove the stories with facts and evidence. This becomes a difficult task for Ward, because there are not many reliable source of information about Marie Laveau. "Either they never existed or they have been stolen, destroyed, or spirited away" (XI). In addition, official historians of the time payed little attention to women, especially women of color. The Laveau women also never left anything in writing. Ward does a good job of citing official documents when they are available. When there are no documents available, Ward cites historical facts about the times, places, and people for New Orleans to put together a story of what most likely happened. This book describes the life of Marie Laveau, the legendary founder and priestess of American Voodoo. Marie Laveau was in fact two women, a mother and daughter with the same name. Both were free women of color, French Catholics, and overwhelmingly beautiful. Both made a tremendous impact on New Orleans. They helped to free slave from bondage. The mother used her knowledge to help cure yellow fever and many other diseases affecting Louisiana at the time. Both Laveau women made a huge impact on the people and the culture of New Orleans. Part of the reason their is not much reliable information on the Laveaus is because the Laveaus did not want their secrets known. After Marie Laveau the first died in June of 1881, Philomere, one of Marie's daughters, was interviewed by the Picayune, a Creole and Catholic newspaper. In this interview Philomere tells the reporter all about her mother's life, but the story is full of false information. Philomere's plan to protect her mothers true story works. Many of the legends about Marie Laveau told in New Orleans today originate from Philomere's story. In the book Ward often cites these falsities and gives the reader the true story using historical fact and documents. Philomere told the reporter that her mother was ninety-eight years old when she died. However, Marie was only seventy-nine when she died. Philomere also told the Picayune that her father, Christophe Glapion, was a free man of color from St. Domingue-Haiti and died in 1835. Ward proves to the reader that this is a lie. Christophe Glapion was a white man and did not die until 1855. Some of the false information in the Picayune story may not be all Philomere's fault. One "fact" stated in the Picayune was that Marie gave birth to "fifteen children in eight years" (65). Ward believes that this "fact" was a result of a mistranslation. "I understood what French-speaking Philomere had probably said to the English-speaking reporter who interviewed her on the day of her mother's death. `My mother had fifteen children and grandchildren'" (66). Ward does some excellent first hand investigating and research to separate fact from fiction. Martha Ward also cites the Works Progress Administration Federal Writers' Project throughout the book. The government created the WPA Writers' Project in 1935 to help unemployed writers during the Great Depression. Writers working with the WPA Writers' Project "collected folklore-tales, stories, supporting records, accounts from slavery times, and other materials about the lives of ordinary people unique to their region, it records that would otherwise disappear with time" (17). They collected hundreds of interviews from Louisiananians from 1935 to 1943. Many of these testimonies from the WPA writers' project included "eyewitness accounts to Voodoo and personal friends or former enemies of both Marie the First and the Second" (17). The people interviewed all had conflicting stories about Marie Laveau, but they all agreed on two points: that both Maries were beautiful and they both wore a tignon, brightly colored fabric wore to cover the hair. One man said: "She was light and could have passed for a Spanish lady. The mens used to go crazy lookin' at her. She had the reddest lips I ever seen in my life. She wore a tignon, with little curls hangin' down her face, ad she always had big gold hoops in her ears. She wore blue dresses that had big skirts and a shirtwaist buttoned straight down the front and come in tight in the middle; it sure showed off her bust" (18).These eyewitness testimonies really help the reader to understand how the people saw the Laveaus. They also serve as evidence when historical documents do not exist. Ward includes a segment of an interview given by a white man, who as a teenager attended a Voodoo ceremony with a slave woman. He describes the scene, people, music, dancing, and emotion at the ceremony that he attended when he was young "the crowd included all ages, every shade of skin, a half dozen white men and at least two white women the boy recognized" (31). He describes his experience of a woman or "enchanted one" dancing and how it fueled the emotion and excitement of everyone who attended the ritual. "She began to sway on one and the other side. Gradually the undulating motion was imparting to her body from the ankles to the hips. Then she tore the white handkerchief from her forehead. This was a signal, for the whole assembly sprang forward and entered the dance. The beat of the drum, the thrum of the banjo, swelled louder and louder. Under the passion of the hour, the women tore off their garments, and entirely nude, went on dancing--no, not dancing but wriggling like snakes" (31-32)This testimony never mentions Marie the First or the Second but it gives the reader a tremendous insight into the world that they lived in and how their spiritual life might have looked. Martha Ward does a wonderful job of telling the story of Marie Laveau the First and the Second. She backs the book up with historical document when they are available, and makes sure not to list anything as fact unless there is proof. When direct proof related to the Laveaus is not available Ward does a wonderful job of describing what is known to be fact about the time, place, and people of New Orleans to help the reader understand the world the Laveaus lived in. Ward does a marvelous job of making sure that her book tells the true story of Marie Laveau.

This was a great book for people who love historical non-fiction and biographies. It’s not a book on magic practices, FYI.Marie Laveau is a fascinating character, well known around New Orleans, but not so much the rest of the country. This is a damn shame. She was a remarkable “free woman of color” who lived in the south pre & post Civil War. This story is so important to cultural history.The author does a great job painting a vivid picture of New Orleans at that time, sorting out Marie’s various family members and connections, as well as painting the broad strokes of Voodoo & Creole cultures.***She makes a point in the forward to tell readers she will include mythos as well as documentation in this book. Some reviewers seemed upset she had done so — I didn’t have that issue. IMO, it added color and vibrancy to the book, and it was easy to determine what was based on myth, and what was based on fact. The author was clear throughout. But it’s something super academic types may want to know going forward.One part of the book I feel compelled to add in the review is a cultural piece about Voodoo and slavery. This was a great piece of lore the author calls gumbo ya-ya. It details Marie’s daughter bringing a plate of food to the city outskirts at night. People who saw her assumed it was part of religious worship (as food is a big part of Voodoo), when instead she was leaving food for runaway slaves. I loved the cleverness of this. The book is filled with similar stories of these people working around hateful laws and helping each other. Reference: Pg. 83I loved the feel of this book. Historical, non-fiction, but retaining that air of mystery and magic. A very pleasant, easy read.

This book tells the story of Marie Laveau, both mother and daughter of the same name. It's the story of an independent, black Creole woman who exercised cultural and social power, magical or otherwise, in the racially and culturally complex worlds of nineteenth century New Orleans.New Orleans in the nineteenth century was a complicated place. Slaves, free blacks, French whites, southern whites, Creoles, "quadroons", and Native Americans seem to have moved through worlds with unique intersections in Catholicism, commercialism, inter-marriage, and the practical concubinage of "placage". Add to the mix the passage from French rule to American and you get an amazing mass of shifting racial, political, legal, and religious power relationships. And Laveau seems to have been as much a master of navigation through that complicated world as anyone could have been.Voodoo rituals and beliefs certainly played a role in her power, and Voodoo certainly was "real" in the New Orleans of her time, in its beliefs and practices. You don't have to buy into a religious acceptance of Voodoo to appreciate it as a sociological force, especially within a population striving for the power to define and maintain itself in an often hostile culture.Martha Ward's book, judging from what other readers have said of it, is probably not the definitive biography of Marie Laveau. But it is a very engaging account of the "story" of Marie Laveau, both mother and daughter. The author seems as much taken by what people believed of Laveau as what may actually have been true about her. She does take some pain to separate truth from myth, but the myth seems to have been an essential part of the history of Marie Laveau. Ward's sources, which include oral histories recorded via the WPA's Federal Writers' Project, provide just that same mix of fact and myth-like interpretation.All in all, an entertaining book that I found intriguing enough to want to read more, more about the factual Marie Laveau and more about that fascinating tangle of politics, race, religion, and informal sources of power that made up the New Orleans of her time.

Loved it

This book is a true delight. Beautifully presented and researched story of the legendary Voodoo Queen.

Fascinating.