Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica (1938)

“Tell My Horse” is an interesting account of life and voodoo in Haiti and Jamaica in the 1930’s, all told somewhat informally and in a very engaging style by Zora Neale Hurston, who is better known for “Their Eyes Were Watching God”.

The descriptions of hunting wild hogs, voodoo dances, polygamy, zombies, cannibalism, and possession are all memorable. The animal sacrifices are a bit painful to read about (tearing chickens to death, cutting out the tongue of a rooster, cutting off the testicles of a pig, and burying a dog alive :-( ), but Hurston reports on this and the other aspects of what she sees while showing restraint and reserving judgment. She is adventurous, open-minded, and tolerant, and this adds to her appeal.

The book includes photographs which provide flavor to the text, and some of which are stunning, for example, the closeup of the loa “mounting” the houngan (the spirit possessing a priest), and the “zombie”. Here Hurston falls down a bit, truly believing that what she’s seen and photographed is a zombie (“So I know that there are Zombies in Haiti. People have been called back from the dead.”), but it’s forgivable. Also forgivable is the editing, it seems Chapter 17, Doctor Reser was written first, as it defines several of the terms used earlier in the book, so it’s a bit out of order, as well as including repeat information.

The Afterword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is interesting. It describes Alice Walker’s attempts to find Hurston’s unmarked grave in a segregated cemetery, a story which was published in 1975. Hurston had died poor and was largely forgotten as an author; the idea of Walker wading through waste-high weeds in a snake-infested cemetery to try to find her grave is moving to me.

It also describes Hurston’s strong political views which alienated African-Americans at the time, e.g. her description of “sobbing story of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a dirty deal.” While viewed as retrograde, there is a toughness that is admirable, e.g. her description of her first novel being a “manifesto against the ‘arrogance’ of whites assuming that ‘black lives are only defensive reactions to white actions.’”, and “Roll your eyes in ecstasy and ape his every move, but until we have placed something upon his street corner that is our own, we are right back where we were when they filed our iron collar off.”

Quotes:
On preparing women for consummation of marriage:
“Among other things she is told that the consummation of love cannot properly take place in bed. Soft beds are not for love. They are comforts for the old and lack-a-daisical. Also she is told that her very position must be an invitation. When her lord and master enters the chamber she must be on the floor with only her shoulders and the soles of her feet touching the floor. It is so that he must find her.”

This section goes on to describe an erotic oil massage that an old woman gives a young bride-to-be, complete with Ganga and rum, such that “she is in a twilight state of awareness, cushioned on a cloud of love thoughts.”

On the attitude towards women in the Caribbean as it compares to the U.S.:
“The majority of men in all the states are pretty much agreed that just for being born a girl-baby you ought to have laws and privileges and pay and perquisites. And so far as being allowed to voice opinions is concerned, why, they consider that you are born with the law in your mouth, and that is not such a bad arrangement either. The majority of the solid citizens strain their ears trying to find out what it is that their womenfolk want so they can strain around and try to get it for them, and that is a very good idea and the right way to look at things.
But now Miss America, World’s champion woman, you take your promenading self down into the cobalt blue waters of the Caribbean and see what happens. You meet a lot of darkish men who make vociferous love to you, but otherwise pay you no mind. If you try to talk sense, they look at you right pitifully, as if to say ‘What a pity! That mouth that was made to supply some man (and why not me) with kisses, is spoiling itself asking stupidities about banana production and wages!’ It is not that they try to put you in your place, no. They consider that you never had any.”

A folktale on slavery:
“Once Africans could all fly because they never ate salt. Many of them were brought to Jamaica to be slaves, but they never were slaves. They flew back to Africa. Those who ate salt had to stay in Jamaica and be slaves, because they were too heavy to fly.”

On dancing:
“Clothes were torn away unconsciously. Two or three hot, wet bodies collided with me. I saw women picked up by their buttocks, their bodies bent backwards so limply that their heads and heels trailed the ground. Their faces were bathed in rum to revive them. If it took too long, they were carried outside of the lighted circle somewhere to be revived. The drummers, the shuckers, the rackling men had played their faces into ferocious masks. Ecstatic body movements went with every throb.”

On “truth” in Voodoo:
“Thus the uplifted forefinger in greeting in Voodoo is really phallic and that means the male attributes of the Creator. The handclasp that ends in the fingers of one hand encircling the thumb of the other signifies the vulva encircling the penis, denoting the female aspects of the diety. ‘What is the truth?’ Dr. Holly asked me, and knowing that I could not answer him he answered himself through a Voodoo ceremony in which the Mambo, that is the priestess, richly dressed is asked this questioned ritualistically. She replies by throwing back her veil and revealing her sex organs. The ceremony means that this is the infinite, the ultimate truth.”
(amen to that)

On government, and difficulties with politics in the region:
“So far there has been little recognition of compromise, which is the greatest invention of civilization and its corollary, recognition of the rule of the majority which is civilization’s most useful tool of government. Of course, it is more difficult to discover the will of the majority in a nation where less than ten percent of the population can read and write. Still there is remarkable lack of agreement among those few who do not read and write.”

I love how Hurston relates this to politician’s treatment of African-Americans in the South at the time, those who “never fail to quote ‘We have made the greatest progress in sixty years of any people on the face of the globe.’”, however, “But America has produced a generation of Negroes who are impatient of the orators. They want to hear about more jobs and houses and meat on the table.”

On tolerance, and religion:
“We had gotten to the place where neither of us lied to each other about our respective countries. I freely admitted gangsters, corrupt political machines, race prejudice, and lynchings. She as frankly deplored bad politics, overemphasized class distinctions, lack of public schools, and transportation. We neither of us apologized for Voodoo. We both acknowledged it among us, but both of us saw it as a religion no more venal, no more impractical than any other.”

On religion:
“Gods always behave like the people who make them.”

And this one, which I love:
“I fail to see where it would have been more uplifting for them to have been inside a church listening to a man urging them to ‘contemplate the sufferings of our Lord,’ which is just another way of punishing one’s self for nothing. It is very much better for them to climb the rocks in their bare clean feet and meet Him face to face in their search for the eternal in beauty.”

Lastly on twins, for anyone who knows any:
“It is believed that twins have some special power to harm if they are not appeased.” ( )

Very vivid account of Hurston's travels through Jamaica and Haiti and her
exploration of voodoo and related beliefs. Parts of the book dealing with Jamaica are fairly conventional travelogue, and her grim version of Haitian politics before the US intervention (which she regards as beneficial) may be controversial, but her participant-observer accounts of attending voodoo ceremonies are strikingly sympathetic for that period. She does report rumors of the cannibalistic "Secte Rouge" but regards it as separate from orthodox voodoo. She also is clearly aware that "zombies" are actually victims of poisoning, a fact whose "discovery" was widely hailed much more recently, but which was apparently the opinion of several qualified observers in Haiti in her day. ( )

This is one of the best acedemic 'insiders' view of real haitian vodou. This is a must have book for anyone in the religion, thinking about becoming a part of the religion, or simply curious about what is real and what is false. ( )