Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica

by Zora Neale Hurston

Book Overview

"Strikingly dramatic, yet simple and unrestrained . . . an unusual and intensely interesting book richly packed with strange information."

--New York Times Book Review

Based on Zora Neale Hurston's personal experiences in Haiti and Jamaica, where she participated as an initiate rather than just an observer of voodoo practices during her visits in the 1930s, this travelogue into a dark world paints a...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061695130
• ISBN13: 9780061695131
• Release Date: December 2008
• Publisher: Amistad Press
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.3" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Great but dated

A highly influential book on vodou in its day and worth buying still as an historical document, but now rather dated in terms of information. A good book to accompany this would be Vodou Shaman by Ross Heaven, which brings the whole subject area truly up to date.

Engaging reading, fantastic stories

Reading this book is like travelling along with Ms. Neale Hurston as she explores life in Haiti. You will meet fanscinating and intriguing people. The practices and beliefs are explained in just enough detail to make you feel like you were there, but all the mystery is retained as even the author is unable to explain or understand the depth of experience and strength of beliefs held by the native Haitians. Finding non-fiction that reads like a novel is a rare and wonderful treasure.

It Will Change Your Reality

If this book was fiction I would call it one of the most imaginative books I have ever read, but it's real. It is scary, unbelievably deep, and true. A wonderful anthropological gathering of stories, ceremonies , and everyday life. Let me wash my face with Jalapeno rum if I'm not telling the truth about this book being great. You can tell my horse.

Zora's trip into voodoo

In the late 1930s, Zora Neale Hurston toured Jamaica and Haiti on a Guggenheim Fellowship collecting folklore and voodoo materials for this book, published in 1938. The book is in three sections, covering her views of and experiences in Jamaica, people and politics of Haiti, and finally her initiation and participation in the world of Haitian voodoo. Zora maintains her usual stance of the involved, inquisitive participant, and her initiation into the ways of voodoo was, and is, both remarkable and engaging. From sexism in Jamaica to threats about her voodoo investigations, from commentary on her role as ethnographer to criticism of previous white studies of voodoo, the book is wild, and collects a huge range of important black cultural practices. Zora left the field hurriedly in 1938, desperately ill, convinced she might die, and sure that she had been 'hexed' for delving too deep into the world of 'bad' (petro) voodoo...have a read of one of the most important pieces of black folklore research of the 1930s. Parlay cheval ou! Ah bo bo!