Thanks for listening y'all! This was a lot of fun though of course as soon as it was over I thought of so many things I left out or could have said. There should be a /r/academicshowerdebates or something for all those times you think of the perfect response to that question at a talk or when that committee member blindsides you in the hallway with an inquisition. But hopefully it is interesting and informative.

Enjoy!

##Further Reading & Exploring Suggestions:

First, I want to suggest this great documentary called The White Fantasy of The Haitian Zombie which is available at this link. You have to download it to see the whole thing (drop box cuts off around 15 min for streaming.) But it interviews a number of anthropologists & other scholars I highly respect and is well done. If you're interested in the Haitian concept of zonbi and how that has been coopted and changed by Hollywood take a look. The film is up for the rest of the month for free. (I don't know the copyright details but one of the scholars involved shared it on social media so I assume this is on the up and up.)

Second, there are some great books about Haitian history with relation to some of the stuff we discussed that worth checking out. Also I'm throwing in a couple old enough that they are interesting from a historical perspective even if they were more anthropological at the time. See:

• Dubois, Laurent 2004. Avengers of the New World: The story of the Haitian revolution. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press: Cambridge.

• Dupuy, Alex. 2007. The Prophet and Power: Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the International community, and Haiti. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

• Fatton, Robert Jr. 2002. Haiti’s Predatory Republic: The Unending Transition to Democracy. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.

• Herskovits, Melville 1937. Life in a Haitian Valley. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.

And third, here are some interesting history or at least historically focused pieces about African diasporas that I enjoy.

• Barnes, Sandra 1989. Africa’s Ogun: Old World and New. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

• Bascom, William R. (comp.) 1972. Shango in the New World. Austin: African and Afro-American Research Institute. University of Texas at Austin.

• Bellegarde-Smith, Patrick and Claudine Michel 2005. Fragments of Bone: neo-African religions in a new world. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

• Drewal, Henry John 2008. Sacred Waters: Arts for Mami Wata and Other Divinities in Africa and the Diaspora. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

• Heusch, L. Luc de 1989. Kongo in Haiti: a new approach to religious syncretism. Man 24:290-303.

• Metraux, Alfred 1959. Voodoo in Haiti. New York: Schocken Books.

• Murphy, Joseph M. 2001. Osun Across the Waters: A Yoruba Goddess in Africa and the Americas. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

And of course I discuss Deren some in the podcast so if you're interested here is her film and here is the citation for her book: Deren, Maya. 1953. Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti. Kingston: Documentext

I'm happy to give citations and further reading suggestions or just answer questions. :)

BTW if anyone is curious about the design used for the podcast icon that is a veve for Legba. Veve are hand drawn symbols for the spirits (lwa) that create a doorway between this world and the spirits. In a sense it calls them across the waters to the physical place of the ritual. Legba is one of the first lwa called because he guards the crossroads so he's important to placate before you start inviting everyone else to the party. Veve are made by carefully dropping cornmeal (and other secret ingredients) from your hand onto the dirt or concrete to create a design. Here is my own attempt at drawing Legba's veve

/u/Firedrops is great in general and wonderful in this Podcast. Congrats on another excellent addition to the series.

Special thanks to Elm, Mark K., Vlad, and Max M. for their generous support of the podcast through the AskHistorians Patreon. Special mention to Matt F., for boldly being our first supporter and Andy B. for putting us over the top in meeting our first funding goal.

This is a bit far afield from the topic, but I wonder if /u/firedrops can talk a little more about the role of Bakongo slaves in the Hatian revolution. Particularly, can you share any information about the historiography of Kongo slaves using military skills learned in the Kingdom of Kongo in the new world?

I know that John Thornton made a similar case that Bakongo slaves were the driving force behind the Stono Revolt in South Carolina and they engaged in activities characteristic of military practice during the first Kongo Civil War.

Otherwise, with the exception of Yoruba influence in the Bahia revolt, I haven't really read works that try to examine the African military and spiritual dimensions of slave revolts in the Americas. Am I just missing the trend?

Several times you mention people asking a lwa for help with a job, and you said that joblessness was a particular problem for Hatian men. Why is that?

Is the Hatian job-market gendered in a way that is more open to women? Or is it that (young) Hatian men are expected to have the resources for a dowry or simply to be a family breadwinner?

Hi /u/firedrops, I have some (quite late) questions:

I sent the episode to a friend who is versed in Afro-Brazilian religions (candomblé and umbanda, mostly), and she asked me to ask you about possession in vodou and vodou cosmogony.

Apparently, in neither of those traditions the possessed's soul gets replaced by the entity's: possession is possible when the medium and the orixá synch the frequency of their axé ("vital energy") - in umbanda, in fact, the medium stays semiconcious during possession. Her question then is: in vodou cosmology, where does the "big soul" goes during possession?
[And to that, I add: do the possessed's soul run any particular risk during possession, or is it being protected by the Lwa?]

The second question is about how the world was created according to vodou. She is asking specifically if there's any sort of creation myth, and what is it (she says she wants to compare it to the candomblé founding myth).

Cheers and congrats on the great interview.

Hello /u/firedrops I know I am so incredibly late, but I listened to this episode months ago, but was recently telling a friend about it. They brought up the question of why Boston is such a center of Haitian Vodou. Basically I am wondering, what are the origins of Vodou/General Haitian culture in an area so far separated from the Caribbean?