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Creole Culture Wars and Rogue Colonialism
In this splendid and groundbreaking history of colonial New Orleans, Shannon Dawdy demonstrates her powers as research and raconteur and captivates the reader with her talent for spinning out the human stories that made New Orleans in its infancy the place of infamy, chicanery, and romance that has so firmly lodged it in the minds of Americans and others.It is a wonderful read and one that makes me, a historical archaeologist like Dawdy though not, I fear, one of her caliber, stew in impatient anticipation of her forthcoming works on the archaeology of our beloved Crescent City. ... Read more

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Kidnapped into slavery in 1841, Northup spent 12 years in captivity. This autobiographical memoir represents an exceptionally detailed and accurate description of slave life and plantation society. "A moving, vital testament to one of slavery’s ‘many thousand gone’ who retained his humanity in the bowels of degradation..."—Saturday Review. 7 illustrations. Index.
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Customer Reviews (19)

SHOULD BE REQUIRED READING
This book was a magnificent memoir of some of the bleakest times of our history.This shocking tale is gruesome without being vulgar; gripping without being sentimental.The distorted thinking and values that allowed slavery to continue were intelligently portrayed.It is interesting how people, when they violate their own sensibilities and basic moral principals, become defensive, fearful, and violent.Such is this study of the slave holder as well as the enslaved.Mr. Northrup, from an emancipated family fell into the traps of kidnapping and enslavement.His education and connections allowed him to finally regain the life he had lost.As the story is recalled, the narrative reflected intelligence and sophistication, even if the prose was antiquated.Its style and relevance, however, make a great vocabulary builder and, in my opinion, should be required reading of every student in this country.

Outstanding Narrative from the View of a Free Man
this book or any biography from a former slave is a MUST read. Only a racist or compltete idiot would think ANY slave or prisoner be it now or then is happy in any stretch of the word.

Twelve Years a Slave: An African American Heritage Book
Have not had time to read this book yet but I have seen the movie. Very good! I am sure the book will tell me more. I was very happy to receive it and it came in a very timely manner! Thank you!

Very Informative
After going to Hawaii this past summer and reading about how the sugar cane industry used slaves,I became interested in the Carib Islands and started reading about them. Slavery is such a huge issue and has been and really got it's start in the Islands,I came across this title in a read and thought it might be good.I was right, very good and informative.Descriptive and brings a lot of questions.

Twelve Years a Slave
Solomon Northup's Twelve Years a Slave is a great read for anyone with the slightest interest in early American history.Northup's tale is intriguing and informative.Not only will the reader get a very interesting story from this work, but will also get a close look at the institution of slavery from the slaves' perspective like few other sources can.One important question Northup seems to be addressing is the reasons why slaves did not just run away.Why did they put up with such harsh treatment?Northup admits to having held these sentiments before being kidnapped and sold into slavery - but his attitude rapidly changes. ... Read more

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With this colorful study, Reid Mitchell takes us to Mardi Gras-to a yearly ritual that sweeps the richly multicultural city of New Orleans into a frenzy of parades, pageantry, dance, drunkenness, music, sexual display, and social and political bombast. In All on a Mardi Gras Day Mitchell tells us some of the most intriguing stories of Carnival since 1804. Woven into his narrative are observations of the meaning and messages of Mardi Gras-themes of unity, exclusion, and elitism course through these tales as they do through the Crescent City. ... Read more

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Mardi Gras is FUN
Pssssst!Don't tell the author of this book, but Mardi Gras is actually FUN!Reid Mitchell makes it sound like one long dreary class war.And he gets his facts wrong.The chapter about gay Carnival, around p. 144 or so, is full of errors that anybody could have fact-checked for him, and total misunderstandings of the New Orleans community.For example, the Bourbon St. Awards had not been held "at Bourbon and St.Anne" for many and many a year prior to the publication of this book.But the author has axes to grind, and facts aren't going to stand in the way.

Skip the dour, depressing, politically correct social commentary and y'all come to the Mardi Gras, and see for yourself.You will have fun!!!!!!

Reviews by Redmon
In All on a Mardi Gras Day, Reid Mitchell writes an outstanding book that approaches Mardi Gras from both a historical and cultural perspective. Mitchell's attention to historical details, his courage to make certainclaims---and then supporting them by citing references---and his devotionto posing and answering questions using concise and clear paragraphs makesthis book a joy to read and accessible to almost anyone! ... Read more

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benefit of hindsight
Consider that the book was written in 2000, before Hurricane Katrina rolled into town in 2005. It makes reading the narrative have an unintended aspect. From the vantage of hindsight you can see what some of the consequences of the history explained in the text have been. The development of the New Orleans region in the 20th century, with its extensive levees and inadequate and incompetent supervision by local boards is readily apparent. The tales of internal politics by those boards do not inspire much confidence. Along with the very fragmented nature of having several boards, whose coordination with each other was typically lacking.

The authors also do explain some of the colourful history of the town, especially before the 20th century. Which in part can explain why New Orleans still retains a grip on the American imagination. ... Read more

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Each year, thousands of pilgrims visit the celebrated New Orleans tomb where Marie Laveau is said to lie.They seek her favors or fear her lingering influence.Voodoo Queen: The Spirited Lives of Marie Laveau is the first study of the Laveaus, mother and daughter of the same name, who were two legendary leaders of religious and spiritual traditions many still label as evil.

The Laveaus were free women of color and prominent French-speaking Catholic Creoles.From the 1820s until the 1880s when one died and the other disappeared, gossip, fear, and fierce affection swirled about them.From the heart of the French Quarter, in dance, drumming, song and spirit possession, they ruled the imagination of New Orleans.

How did the two Maries apply their "magical" powers and uncommon business sense to shift the course of love, luck, and the law? The women understood the real crime?they had pitted their spiritual forces against the slave system of the United States. Moses-like, they led their people out of bondage and offered protection and freedom to the community of color, rich white women, enslaved families, and men condemned to hang.

The curse of the Laveau family, however, followed them. Both loved men they could never marry.Both faced down the press and police who stalked them. Both countered the relentless gossip of curses, evil spirits, murders, and infant sacrifice with acts of benevolence.

The book is also a detective story---who is really buried in the famous tomb in the oldest "city of the dead" in New Orleans?What scandals did the Laveau family intend to keep buried there forever? By what sleight of hand did free people of color lose their cultural identity when Americans purchased Louisiana and imposed racial apartheid upon Creole creativity? The book brings the improbable testimonies of saints, spirits, and never-before printed eyewitness accounts of their ceremonies and magical crafts to the lives of the two Marie Laveaus, leaders of a major, indigenous American religion. ... Read more

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Great book
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.

An error that should not have been made
One word, "Crayfish".Yes this is a real word, but I have never heard anyone in New Orleans or the state of Louisiana use it.For all the research she is claiming to have done, and for working in New Orleans, it seems she would know the locals use the word "Crawfish".This one little error says a lot about her research and what she knows about New Orleans.Another author romanticizing a city and era they know nothing about.

Disappointing
This book is was not written in an enjoyable format.Martha Ward jumped from person to person and date to date and back and forth and all around.She also injected her views on people and places without presenting proof of validity.They were simply her views, but the way she wrote them in, they could appear to be factual.

meh...
Another reviewer here has stated that the author should perhaps have written a historical fiction influenced by Leveau, like what Atwood did with Grace Marks in "Alias Grace".

To be honset, I wouldn't have read the book then either.That's because I can't read this book without feeling... well... search inside and read a brief excerpt.The writing reads like a freshman comp paper.I can't take it seriously because the author's put so much fluff into it.

Check it out for yourself, but read the excert before you go out and actually blow some scratch on this book.Who exactly is she qouting in that first chapter?

Bah... if you're interested in Marie Leveau, a topic worthy of interest; then I recomend Long's investigation into the who Marie Leveau was.It too, has it's short-comings, but I assure you that it is more worth your time than this.

voodoo queen the spirited lives of marie laveau
Great book , loved it, thought it was wonderful ... Read more