Voodoo Queen: The Spirited Lives of Marie Laveau

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 show more 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. show less

A great biography on a historical Legend.
Marie Laveau is the well-renowned voodoo queen of New Orleans. Her gifts and magic were legendary. Her good deeds for the colored community led her into the books of history. But could there have been more than one Marie Laveau? This book examines the historical records of Marie Laveau and tries to decipher between Marie Laveau senior and her daughter Marie Laveau the second.
In this book Martha Ward takes us on a grand adventure through Voodoo country New Orleans. She paints a picture so vivid with color that you feel that you are they're watching Marie Laveau in Congo Square dancing with a snake wrapped around her body to the beat of slowly resounding drums. She examines all aspects of the life show more and even death of the 2 Marie Laveaus. She also paints a great setting of the early to mid-1800s and gives us a chance to peek into the world in which they lived and the tribulations they fought and overcame in their own time.
Expertly written! Very clean and precise in her research, Martha Ward takes the reader on a fantastic journey through this book. Though the two story lines are a bit confusing, Ward writes it in a way to make it easier for the reader to follow along and try for themselves to distinguish between the two lines. The cover art is absolutely beautiful and Vivid with color and sets the stage for the Voodoo Queen herself.
I. LOVE. THIS. BOOK. Amazing storytelling especially for a biography. I love all the history that Ward has included in this book not just about the Marie Laveau's but also about the time era surrounding their lives. She obviously did a lot of very hard research in order to write this book. I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys history, voodoo, the occult, or just a really good book in general. show less

I loved this book! I picked it up in a roundabout way; I was searching for a different book on my library database, and this title came up by accident. My local library didn't have it, so I immediately requested it from another branch. I'm very happy that I did, as it was immensely fascinating. Ward writes about the two famous women who have been combined in popular memory into one, the mother and daughter, both named Marie Laveau. There's not a lot of information about either woman for many reasons; records have been lost or destroyed, rumors and legends have been treated as facts, besides the two Maries profiled there were numerous other women (some related, some not) by the same name living in New Orleans in the 19th century. Ward show more does an admirable job tracking down facts about the women's lives, dispelling myths about voodoo, while at the same time never taking away from the immense spiritual impact that is their legacy. I learned not only about these two remarkable priestesses and voodoo in general, but also about life as a Creole, a woman, and a free person of color in 19th century New Orleans. Highly recommended; five stars. show less

Very interesting book, both on the Marie Laveau's, and also on the Creoles and New Orleans.

I hope to get this one before it's out of print.