Before we continue through the ritual order of the Vodou Lwa, now that we’ve talked about the Marasa and Papa Legba, I’d like to talk about entering Vodou as an outsider.
I’ll speak about myself first, for full transparency. Ancestrally, I’m a New York mutt. My four grandparents had four ethnicities. Three of the four’s families entered the U.S. through Ellis Island and settled in immigrant communities in the city and surrounding areas. My father’s parents were German and Spanish. My mother’s father was Italian.
My mother’s mother was the exception. She traveled to New York from Puerto Rico in 1937, after meeting my grandfather on a cruise liner where she “picked him up with a cookie,” as she explained it. I still don’t really understand what the deal was with this cruise. My Italian grandfather had lost his foot jumping on the back of a streetcar as a teenager and proceeded to dedicate himself to academics, being ineligible for hard labor. He was already in his early 30s at the time of this cruise, and my grandmother was well into her 20s. The independence movement in Puerto Rico was starting to meet intense resistance from the U.S. at this time; something she never mentioned, but I later put together. The year she left was the year of the Ponce Massacre. Their courtship, judging from remaining letters, was pretty instantaneous. So I have to wonder whether he was trying to find an eager Puerto Rican wife, and she wanted to get off the island. I suppose I will never know.
In keeping with the times, all of my grandparents, but most especially my mom’s parents, leaned hard into assimilation. Italian immigrants had been lynched alongside Black laborers. Puerto Ricans were spat upon. So they did their best, in Queens and then in the suburbs of New Jersey, to fit in with mainstream American culture. My lawyer grandfather trimmed his unspellable Italian surname into an ethnically neutral five letters. Except for a smattering of individual words, my mom and her sisters did not learn Spanish in the home. They were discouraged from associating with Puerto Ricans (especially boys). They were told, proudly, that their Puerto Rican grandparents were from Spain, to further reinforce their whiteness. Their access to Puerto Rican culture was mostly through problematic outside representations like West Side Story. Which I still love, by the way. But it’s problematic AF.
By the time I came into the picture, my family of origin was very American in that ethnically ambiguous, slightly-off-white New York sort of way. We ate weird food and used different words for body parts. My grandmother had an accent. My mom and her sisters wore a lot of colors and floral stuff and jewelry. We were, as an ex once called me, “spicy whites.” A triumph from my grandparents' point of view. Their assimilation earned us relative safety.
All this is to say, I am not Haitian, and did not grow up with Vodou. I can safely say I came to this tradition from the outside in terms of the culture and family I grew up in. It swam up from deep, deep in the background.
How far outside, though? I can trace some DNA back to Africa and the indigenous Taino through Puerto Rico. It turns out my great grandparents were not Spanish; according to my great uncle in Puerto Rico, they were from the Dominican Republic, on the same island as Haiti. Some French DNA that is traceable through my mother's side might bear a Haitian connection out, or it might have come through Spain or French immigration to Puerto Rico. We'll never know, but perhaps there is a mystery buried within my DNA that explains how called I feel to this tradition.
Does this matter, though? Does DNA give or bar any access to Vodou as a tradition? Does ancestry matter at all, especially when it’s just the drop that remains with me? How about the generations of broken lineage?
According to my Haitian godmother, who has never once asked me about or shown the slightest interest in my ancestry, the Lwa do not care about all this. They are ancestors. Everyone has ancestors. And if they’re calling you, you know, and no one can really argue with you about that. People can say whatever they want, but it’s between you and your spirits. YOU are not coming to IT from the Outside. They are already inside, and they are talking to you.
I will say that, to me, this story of origin and assimilation and reunion does matter. It does feel like I’m being called very loudly by African ancestors via the Caribbean to return to this tradition. But that doesn’t invalidate the experience of any person who does not have traceable Caribbean or African ancestry who is called to this tradition. I trust and believe in the Lwa, and I trust that they’re not going to talk to you unless they want to. If you’re somehow faking it, that’s your business and you’re probably not going to go too deep into the tradition. If they’re calling you, how you respond is both your business and your responsibility.
There is a lot of controversy and confusion on the internet about who gets to practice Haitian Vodou. It’s good that it’s even a question, and that people from outside the tradition are discouraged from claiming it as theirs at the first blush of interest. There are those who, understandably, are irritated to see white people entering Vodou spaces when the tradition has not only clear African roots, but was forged in the experience of enslavement and self-liberation in a very specific, unique place. They fear, with good reason, that white engagement with Vodou could repeat a galling pattern of cultural appropriation: a chunk of culture, at first demonized and violently suppressed by colonial powers in its organic context, is then plucked from this context like any exploited resource and giddily placed like a jewel in the colonial crown. We don’t want that to happen to Vodou. We want it to remain in its context, and to protect its context.
I have not, however, seen elders within Vodou saying that the tradition is only ever open to people of Haitian descent, nor only open to people of African descent. What I do see is that in order to really enter the tradition as an outsider, you must absolutely respect that this is a deeply established, rich, complex and living tradition, practiced by millions of people, many of whom have grown up immersed in it. You’re not going to invent your own version, or construct it from whatever bits and pieces you can find. It's not, like a piece of abstract art, "whatever you want it to be." You need to know and respect where it came from, and know that your engagement with it is going to be one of constant learning, not just about the spiritual tradition extracted from its origins (which isn’t really possible), but about the whole culture or many cultures it came from.
For an outsider, this learning of the culture is a daunting, pre-initiatory task that probably will continue for the rest of your life, or for as long as you engage with the tradition.
Therefore, I want to point anyone on the outside of this tradition to the resources that are available to start to engage respectfully with the culture.
If you have a local Haitian community, start there. Support local Haitian-owned businesses and restaurants. Put some sweat into local activism that protects Haitian immigrants. Talk to people, make friends with Haitians and Haitian Americans.
Don’t walk into a Haitian social event and announce that you want to learn about Vodou. Many Haitians don’t practice at all, some are trying to get away from all that, and. most would be very wary of a curious outsider snooping around just to learn about this mysterious tradition. That is exactly the kind of exoticizing and extraction we're trying to avoid.
Instead, show up as a helpful, community oriented person. Once you practice Vodou, you will be approaching the Lwa with the same respect, patience, and mutuality, not jumping in and demanding things of strangers. You might as well practice this with some flesh and blood folks first. After all, what we are trying to avoid is extraction. What we are trying to cultivate is relationship.
Read and follow and listen to news about Haiti and the diaspora. Share pieces on social media that present Haiti from an inside perspective and that honor the beauty of the culture, people, and land. Read about Haitian history and the Haitian revolution. Listen to Haitian music, both spiritual and secular.
Buy products that support agriculture and art in Haiti. Here’s my favorite coffee that I subscribe to! You can see it has an illustration of a farmer with a Kouzen Zaka-esque straw hat and bag on the label. I'm sure this is not a coincidence! As I mentioned in my previous post, Kouzen is deeply tied to food sovereignty.
Duolingo now offers Haitian Kreyòl as a language. It’s not the best constructed program, but it will get your feet wet with vocabulary and grammar. You do need to know at least some Kreyòl, as a lot of the tradition is transmitted through songs, and when the Lwa come down, they generally speak Kreyòl. You’re also going to be mingling with human Kreyòl speakers.
There’s also a site called HaitiHub where you can pay a one time subscription fee and have access to a series of lessons that can get you well on your way to speaking Kreyòl. It appears to have been designed for missionaries and NGO workers living in Haiti, but regardless, it’s a good basis. I found their typing-intensive lesson and quiz format rather frustrating (as It will reject completely acceptable answers), especially because written Kreyòl is not at all standardized. Still, if you are committed, the subscription fee is reasonable and the resources and vocabulary are good.
Also, here’s a learnhaitiancreole.com, a website/good podcast/YouTube channel that can familiarize you with the basics of Kreyòl.
There is so, SO much more. To serve the spirits, you’re also going to need to learn to cook the Haitian foods they like, which is a whole project unto itself. You’re going to need to get comfortable with Caribbean supermarkets and ingredients.
And, actually, you CAN ask for Legba’s help with this. Like we already said, Legba stands at the gate. He is accessible to people outside the tradition. While you start to engage with the culture, you can work with Legba to request access and learning.
Best of luck on your journey!
